Epic Games is Not Developing for Android Because of the Carriers

[dgstorm]

In an interview with Tim Sweeney, Epic Games Founder, Gizmodo found out that the reason why Epic is developing for the iOS and not for Android isn't Google's fault or the handset manufacturer's fault. It's the carriers fault. Apparently, Epic's mobile games are so hardware intensive that the 'bloatware' many carriers put on Android phones eats up too much memory to run their games efficiently. Since Apple actually controls that stuff more effectively on the iPhone, Epic Games doesn't have to worry about it as an issue. Here's a quote from Mr. Sweeney,

If you took the underlying NGP hardware and shipped Android on it, you’d find far far less performance on Android. Let’s say you took an NGP phone and made four versions of it. Each one would give you a different amount of memory and performance based on the crap [the carriers] put on their phone. Google needs to be a little more evil. They need to be far more controlling.

It looks like it may be a good thing that Google is cracking down a little bit on the "quality control issues" of fragmentation with Android. Now, they may have to start going after the carriers to stop throwing so much junk on their phones. What do you guys think?

Source: AndroidPolice

[Mujibar]

I think it would be good for some companies to slam the carriers about their bloatware. Might actually help the cause.

[furbearingmammal]

Ah, but then the carriers will scream about "lost profits" (meaning "we didn't make every last penny we possibly could from each sale, even though losing two sales to choke twenty five cents out of one sale is bad business") and the stockholders will baa like the sheep they are!

[Dorian]

Well, some carriers may be to blame... but Moto is also far worse than any carrier. One word: Blur

If there's anything that saps memory on Android handsets, it's the UI customizations that the OEM's come up with. AT&T and Verizon are guilty, but they're N-O-T the main culprits here. Blur, alone, has around 30 apps per handset to manage it's services, plus the system services themselves. NOT NEEDED.

EDIT: Then you have Sense, and while it's "pretty"... it also is a RAM hog.

[Bazar6]

I agree with Dorian on the OEM overlay. It's BS, and they don't need to do it. The overlay on the iPhone is no different from Verizon to AT&T, so why should they feel that Android has to look different from a Moto or Samsung?

And Sweeny's got it right, the carriers need to stop throwing this crap on the phones as a standard, or at least give us the opportunity to take it off without having to root (nice little convo about that was here, kinda dead now tho: Tired of complaining about the Pre-Loaded Apps? See how to take action today!! - Droid Forum - Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum ). I didn't experience that with my OG Droid, but I saw what everyone was talking about when my Mom just got an X this weekend. NFL and NFS come on it, that she'll never play! Of course I downloaded Angry Birds the first day and she's had to charge it 3 times a day she plays it so much haha.