Corona SDK – game engine review

Programming language: Lua

Official site: http://www.coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/

There’s lots of things to like about Corona and it’s quite similar in feel to Flash (which I used to create some games previously). The community also seems very good and responsive. There is a free version but in order to support IAPs I’d need a minimum of the Pro version. However, my main concern with Corona is the reliance on Corona’s server to package up your game. Unless you buy either of the two enterprise versions ($948 or $2388 per annum!) then you’re tied in to using their server for builds.

Aside from the build reliance issue, the annual Pro licence is $588. So, any games I create need to bring in at least the licence cost each year in order for it to be financially viable for me to do updates (without a current licence you can’t do builds). Given that the revenue of many games peaks and then declines (albeit with a long tail in many cases) the constant revenue stream isn’t something you can/should rely on. Ignoring the potential for one of your games to become massive and bankroll you for the foreseeable future then, in my view, the only way this model can work at this sort of cost is if you are producing a stream of games using this SDK. The cost of the licence is therefore spread across the multiple titles and you hope that between them they bring in enough money to break even year on year.

A further consideration is that, as things progress, I may move to using another tool but providing support to an older game developed in Corona could prove costly and force me to retire the game instead of doing updates (such as adding functionality to do cross promotion of my other games). If it was a one-off licence cost then updates would be possible later on for no additional cost. A rolling licence means that you need to factor in the cost of a licence in every year you want to make a change.

A minor gripe, the Corona site lists the licence costs as per developer per month (e.g. the pro account is $49 per developer per month) but they only bill annually ($49 * 12 = $588). Maybe I’m cynical but, since you can’t pay monthly, what’s the point of listing the monthly cost, other than to give smaller headline numbers?

Summary
The cost to market for what I want to do is $588 per annum (IAPs requiring a Pro account). I really like the look of Corona but I can’t see it being a cost effective move for what I want to do and the time I have available. I’m also concerned about being tied-in to using their server for creating the builds. So, it’s not for me.