its not official but apple will dick you over on a number of things if you ship on other platforms. most specifically the highly valuable 'being featured early on the app store'. from what i've heard they have a secret internal policy of checking to see if you shipped on android before doing that...
one of their submission rules is not to mention other platforms in metadata - i'd also take that as a hint that "we like exclusives" - my interpretation of that is that you can't say "also available on Android" - for example.
this is not fresh news either, a quick google on the subject reveals a long history of people moaning about this particular problem... if you are shipping a game and do your homework then you will know this.
Moves is currently featuring on the app store and has a very successful Android app. There are often cross-platform apps that are featured. I'd be interested to see valid sources for your claims - they could very easily be by people who are annoyed their app wasn't featured.
well, there are exceptions its true. and really, if an app is very good and already successful then they will feature it - the problem is that the success of an app can depend on early features. angry birds will be featured because its already successful - if they don't feature it something is obviously amiss.
i don't really have any great concrete sources i'm afraid, its not documented and aside from the web articles i assume you already easily found with google from my prior comment, it comes from hearsay at the pub from talking to other gamedevs and from at least one meeting with apple employees where everything discussed was NDA although i'm sure i can say that such a meeting took place. although the idea that they suggested not shipping on android for at least a few weeks after launch on ios shouldn't be too far fetched...
the fact that not mentioning other platforms in metadata is a submission requirement is a very strong hint too. its an unreasonable request however you cut it.
i despise legal gagging of this kind - i consider it thoroughly despicable and cowardly - only necessary when you know you are in the wrong and don't want anyone to find out, or are deluded into thinking that your corporate secret isn't better off in the wild where it can benefit all of humanity - i.e that you are more important than everyone else and somehow deserve a reward for acquiring knowledge or keeping secrets.
there is also a bit of 'i am going to ship something in the near future'. i've already said more than enough to do damage to myself here. :)
as i hinted at in my initial response this 'idea' is easy to uncover if you do the usual research anyone would do before shipping. (google)
EDIT: okay so not sure how i forgot this because /i worked there/ but when apple ran their 'stargazing app' promotions about a year ago they only featured ios exclusive apps - they also were regularly featuring starwalk aside from that promotion (which is ios exclusive). the app i worked on 'star chart' was not featured - it has been featured recently because it early adopted the iOS 7 UI style - but before that it got missed despite outranking most of those other apps and being a higher quality product more consistent with apple's design guidelines and ethos. now i don't think that necessarily the app was worthy of feature, but a lot of much less polished or worthy apps got a lot of screenspace on the store and the only thing they had in common was not having shipped on other platforms. as much as i dislike those guys for their disgusting attitude towards customers and employees - frankly they deserved better treatment than they got from apple in that regard. not being featured is fine, but featuring vastly inferior competitiors because they are exclusive is utterly despicable.
> its not official but apple will dick you over on a number of things if you ship on other platforms. most specifically the highly valuable 'being featured early on the app store'. from what i've heard they have a secret internal policy of checking to see if you shipped on android before doing that...
i can offer no concrete evidence, but the impression i get from within the gamedev community is that this is generally accepted to be the case.
there are ample hints that this is fits with Apple's philosophy for the app store. the fact that they forbid you from mentioning if you are on other platforms being the most easily verified.
if you are ever lucky enough to meet with some of the Apple guys to discuss how to help your app on the store then you might be able to find out for yourself whether this is bullshit or not.
Many iOS developers have a severe case of blinders on and don't communicate on their websites that their software is iOS only, ever. This does not only affect games, but also productivity software. The end result of that is that in the best case, a person gets to really like a product after having spent time on the marketing copy and when trying to figure out how to buy it for their platform find that they can't and end up despising the company. In the worst case the company uses some intermediary to sell the software, like humblebundle, which means the person can end up paying for the software, only to be told that they can only get an itunes version.
I don't know if that's the reason they do it, but in either case i applaud them for it.
It's also a sign to fans of the Apple aesthetic that it's more "Apple-y" than cross-platform products. See Tapbots vs Evernote for an example. For people that value that aesthetic, "iOS only" is a positive signal.
Ah ok, this makes sense. I thought it was strange to highlight it as the developer didn't appear to be receiving any benefit from doing so (as opposed to "Only on Xbox" games getting special treatment from Microsoft).
