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David Thomson answers your questions on distributing games and apps on different platforms.
Apple Developer. It’s free to register as a developer and build your app, but you must pay a fee of $99/£69 per year if you want to distribute your apps via the App Store (whether or not you charge for the app).
No.
Android Developers. Again, free to register as a developer, but you must pay a one-off fee of $25 to distribute via the Google Play store.
There are a variety of alternative stores available, normally tied to the manufacturer. Of these, Amazon’s own Kindle Fire store is the most popular.
Android games consoles such as OUYA and GameStick are also possibilities – more information about these platforms are available from their websites.
Blackberry, Windows Phone and Surface are the main other technologies you may want to release your app for. However, it should be noted that the number of users for these platforms are far lower than for iOS and Android.
There are a variety of outlets available for your games. If you’ve made a game that can run in the browser try:
For desktop PC/Mac games, the number one outlet is via Steam. However, this can be tricky to achieve unless you can raise the profile of your game or gain enough votes via the Greenlight process.
There are a number of other options available for distributing on PC/Mac:
In addition, you can also use a service such as FastSpring or Itch.io to sell directly via your own website. You should be aware of new VAT rules which came into force in January 2015 if you choose to sell direct.
The short answer is probably not, unless you have a track record or a game that earns a high profile. All the primary console manufacturers (Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony) are all open to small and independent game makers now, and more information can be found on their websites. They also scout game showcase events for new games.