Vox pop
Posted on
May 27, 2012 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
If you're a reasonably frequent reader of WoSland, this is kinda important. Just to the right you'll see a poll. (We apologise for the fact that it's a bit ugly, and in the sidebar rather than in the body of this post – failings which are a result of the absolutely startling shitness of every single WordPress polling plugin.)
Please take five seconds to respond to it. Thanks.
If it helps, I'd read what you wrote about any platform. Even the C64!
That's not quite the point of the question, unfortunately. But cheers!
I currently don't have any but I'm likely to get an ipod touch for my birthday in a couple of weeks…
My old, non-touch Sony ebook reader was the greatest piece of kit I owned until I got an iPhone, and even then I used the hell out of it until I got an iPad too.
So, er, I voted those two options. I user the kindle app on my iOS devices though.
Can't afford any. Using a Nokia 3210 since my last phone died.
I still have a 3rd gen iPod Touch which I use less and less these days.
Gaming on it is not nearly as rich as iOS obv, but it does have some scraps in the form of the lovely Dodonpachi Maximum and a cut down but rather splendid port of Pac-Man CE DX (sadly quite expensive).
And a Nook eReader which is just for books. So I ticked both them.
I also have a Nokia Windows Phone which is my day to day device but has no box to tick
Unless I'm being stupid, the total % of all options (as of now) is 152%. ??
@Steve Smith
They're not mutually exclusive options (well, except the last one), so they won't total to 100% (ie I could have an iPad, Android and a Kindle).
Should be getting a work phone soon (it seems to be Blackberry curve) but at the moment, apart from an Ipod from the dawn of time (seriously) I'm none of the above at the moment.
I'm quite incredulous at number of Android owners.
@Tom K: why incredulous? Samsung is currently the world's biggest phone manufacturer and HTC isn't doing too shabby either – all they make is Androids.
@Tom K
Android and iOS have been swapping the lead position for a couple of years … fuck all decent games on Droid though. Well, there's fuck all *really* good ones on iOS, but even less on Android.
There's been no swapping going on lately, Android is the biggest smartphone platform in the world by some degree. Not sure why Tom is so surprised. Samsung also recently overtook Nokia as the largest phone manufacturer.
Don't know why people continue to claim there are 'fuck all' games on Android though. Many popular iOS titles have Android ports now and there's a crap load of stuff in the market. No doubt a large number of them are shitty (just like on iOS) but there's over 40,000 games available now so even if just a small percentage of them are worthwhile that's still enough to keep you occupied for some time.
Yeah, I’m more surprised that iOS is so far ahead. Though that does seem to suggest that gamers are still keener on Apple’s platform than Android, as opposed to general-purpose smartphone users.
I've got all three: an iPod touch because iOS has the best selection of apps; a Kindle because the amount of reading I was doing by staring at a 3.5" LCD screen was doing my eyes in; and Android installed on an HP Touchpad because they were selling them off for 90 quid and it seemed rude not to buy one at that price. (I use it mainly for internet browsing in bed.)
Android might be top dog in smartphones, but pretty much if you've got a tablet you've got an iPad and if you've got an mp3 player you've got an iPod. And I imagine WoS viewers may be skewed to iOS in part due to / coinciding with's Stu's evangelism.
Anyway, whatchu askin' for, Stu?
Because after some recent events, I'm pretty much done with entertaining people for free. It's highly likely that WoSland will shortly move to some sort of paid-only format, and in the light of the poll showing that surprisingly few people don't have some sort of tablet/smartphone/e-reader, that looks the best approach. For existing subscribers who don't have a suitable device, I'll have to work something out.
I don't know if I could read the site on a phone/ipod. I like to read it via my PC. I'll happily continue on if there's a way of doing that.
^ same here. But with a Mac rather than a PC.
Although… I do have a hand-me-down iPod Touch I would't mind using too much if I had to. I guess.
I feel for you Stu – everyone needs to make a crust – but I honestly don't think this venture will work out for you.
Answer me this – how many websites do you personally pay a real-money subscription to read? It doesn't matter how good the content is, if you start charging people will move on (add the GFC into the equation and you've basically got bugger all chance of netting paid subscribers).
What you should be doing is building your audience through great, free content -that way you can begin to approach advertisers and make a lot more money than 99p per subscriber (or whatever).
I realise you've doubtlessly thought all this through already, but there's my two cents.
“What you should be doing is building your audience through great, free content”
Tried that for two and a half years, with (until recently) posts every day. The audience grew, but at such a rate that it might have become interesting to advertisers by around 2076. Fact is, fewer than 1 in 10 regular readers are subscribers, so even if I lose 90% of the audience I’ll be no worse off. Freeloaders are worth nothing to me, and if I am going to spend my time writing for nothing I’m going to at least do it in the furtherance of a cause I care about (see Wings Over Scotland, which has a substantially bigger readership than this blog already despite only being six months old), rather than just providing quality stuff for shit games journalists to steal.
I have no idea what the “GFC” is.
(G)lobal (F)inancial (C)risis
I'd happily pay a sub for articles the length and quality of those we used to get, trouble is you don't seem that arsed about gaming anymore Rev, other than iThing.
As long as it wasn't all i-apps/games I'd possibly be interested.
Presumably the paysite or app is the destination for the 500 or so posts the public blog used to have and now doesn't?