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Hey all - just published a detailed article about this on my blog, as a preparatory piece to preparing a proposal to GW about how they could open up their codexes to anyone who had access to a web browser.

Here's the article:
http://www.tetsugaku.info/why-havent-games-workshop-published-their-digital-codexes-on-android-as-well-as-iosipad/

And here's an excerpt:

A great many reasons. I grew tired of explaining them to fanboys on the internet so I’ll explain the problems here. Your comments are more than welcome, as is your feedback on my proposed solution.

1) Market Share.
The tablet market is split 60%/40% – IOS / Android according to the latest figures I could track down. This means that the largest single chunk, is resoundingly in Apples garden.

2) Fragmentation
Apple tablets are a single system. They all have the same size screen, one of two resolutions and predictable hardware. Android devices do not have *any* of these benefits as you can see in these info graphics. Designign for them is much, much harder as you have to account for so many more variables.

I'd really appreciate your comments on the article as everything I can get from real gamers (you lot) helps me out with my user research.

Cheers

Thanks for your great range of replies everybody - nice to know people can at least sometimes, have a discussion without it turning into a fan war eh?

If you have any comments you think are especially worthy I'd really encourage you to put them on the original article as well.

Anyway - as you gathered from the original post, my suggestion is a subscription to an HTML based solution that covers all of the things we get out of codexes, as well as all the benefits of things like army builder and White Dwarf, without any of the drawbacks.

I'll be publishing more proposals on my own blog tetsugaku.info and on my professional portfolio The Tall Designer as I come up with them. Ultimately I'm going to have a detailed case study of how to build an open, accessible, usable system, based on web standards that serves the needs of gamers whilst making GW the profit that they deserve for creating the games and rules.

Who knows, it might even happen.

Cheers!

This whole thing about iPads being given to senior staff is such a laughable conspiracy theory I might have to have the quotes here printed and framed on the wall for when I need a laugh.

You don't seriously think GW is a blip on Apple's radar do you?

You don't think they even know who they are?

GW Is tiny, I mean really tiny. Apple is the most valuable company on the *planet*.

I was at Nottingahm HQ yesterday for the 40K open day and there were a few Macs about, but nothing to show off about and they only had an iPad at the Digital Products stand to show off codexes.

Believe me - nobody at GW got free anything unless you count the stuff you get given to do your job, like a desk, a computer or some pens.

This is about as hilarious as the rumour that GW changed their paint colour names because they didn't have the rights to the names anymore.

davou wrote:That's bs; android sales are measurably outpacing IOS for a long while now, and if they were going for ease of development then the obvious outlet for their efforts would have been some sort of DRM capable ebook.

You're missing the point - it doesn't matter that there are more sales of Android than IOS. Market share is not begin disputed here (although in tablets it's 60/40 iOS/Droid). The point is that Android users don't buy apps, their machines are harder to dev for, they have a piracy problem, there isn;t a unified store system and all the other things I mentioned.

[quote=wraith[cs]]
But, and I'm trying to continue to be cooperative, I won't bail on this thread like some 3 year old throwing a tantrum.
.

TheContortionist wrote:i don't know what you're talking about. i have every codex and the 6th rule book on my droid.

Then you're ripping off GW for quality content that you could pay for, jeopardising the hobby for everyone.

Well done.

Slow clap.

Still no droid codexes I see. Shame GW never went down the HTML5 / renting access route.