About Cytus

The App store game Cytus has raised a phenomenal trend in music game playing. I am personally addicted to it for about one year, not only because of its enjoyable game play but also because its smart idea of its marketing and pricing strategy.

Cytus is a music video game developed by Rayark Games, an independent game developing corporation in Taiwan. Cytus is a score-based video game. The game currently have 62 songs and has about 120,000 downloads from all the platforms combined.

I think one can really see the magic power that Cytus have until he/she plays it. I am personally a fan of music games and I downloaded many free or paid music games in this category, such as Beat Hazord Ultra, Beatogether,  Tone Sphere. But in my opinion, none of these games can compared to Cytus.








 

In my opinion, Cytus stands out of the music games for several reasons.

1. The songs are originally created for the game. Therefore the hitting point and actions was closely attached to the game.
2. Unlike the music of many other games, the songs are of high quality and varies from pop music to classic music and symphonic music, which caters to a big segment of players
   
3. The 62 songs was divided into 6 chapters. Each chapter has a theme. Each Songs and Each chapter has an elaborate drawing or poster set as the background of the gameplay; therefore each song is identifiable for palyers. 
4. Even not displayed yet, Cytus was trying to convey an epic story to the players. A question is also raised by all players over the word "What does Cytus mean?" 

Cytus was released in January 2012, when I purchased it on Apple's App Store in September, there was only about 14 songs and there were no chapters. The App charged me $3.99, which was a very expensive for many game players. It was also the most expensive app I bought back in 2012. However, the effect of the game just made me think it's worth the money.

Today, Cytus released the first 4 chapters for free (well of course you should purchase the game first) and charges $1.99 (it was $0.99 earlier this months). Chapter 5 and 6 was locked until you spend another $4.99 for each Chapter.

Now, you might think, "Oh that SUCKKKKS", but The game features a "Million Downloads Plan" announcing that when for every 100,000 downloads (across both iOS and Android) 10 more songs will be added to the game. I think this is just brilliant. Because it actually take a normal player a long time to master all the songs (trust me, if you like this game, you will try to do this) and therefore when a new customer might reach the 200,000 point to unlock Chapter 5 for free.
Also, to cater to the big big fans, they can also spend their money unlock the two chapters.

In this way, Cytus is doing a "double marketing" with different pricing strategy, but without offending either new player or old fans.

iPad or Surface?

Ever since Apple's iPad was invented and came to the marketplace, the iPad series almost dominated the tablet market despite the updating new products from its competitors. Recently, the biggest threaten to iPad 4's market share is Microsoft's Surface.
I bought the new Pad in January and visited Staples for the Surface a couple days ago. I also did a bit research online to compare the two tablet and listed the following features that the two competing products have.


For iPad 4, due to the new ios 6.0 system, it operates faster and has a faster speed to connect to wifi. The reason iPad 4 is called the New Pad is because it has retina display. The retina screen provides a 4 times high resolution and doubles the resistance of scratches than iPad 3. I have to say, the iPad 4 has a much higher improvement from iPad 3 than iPad 3 to iPad 2.

In my opinion, an important reason that Surface might be a great threat to iPad 4's(or even later versions') market share is because the Surface series may suck the business users back to a Windows based operating system. However, I think the current version Surface RT is still not competitive with iPad 4

The Surface that exists on the current market are mainly Surface RT, the size is almost the same as iPad 4. Generally, Surface RT has a better processor than iPad 4.It also has a keyboard attached with it for business users.
However, even though the keyboard is designed for business users to type easily, it does not necessarily feel the same way as typing on a laptop keyboard (from a personal perspective). Therefore, the keyboard really cannot be characterized as an advantage over iPad 4, not to mention that you can actually spend about $100 to buy a blue tooth keyboard for iPads.
Another reason that I think Surface RT might not be competitive is because there is a lot compatibility issue going on. The main motivation for business people to choose Surface is because there are certain software can be accessed easily on Windows system than Apple's ios system. However, for Windows 8 and Surface RT, many of these software are not compatible. This can be a big big discouragement for potential Surface buyers.For example, I am a big PC fan, nevertheless I picked iPad 4 instead of Surface RT.

All of the above is the current picture I drew for people who plans to buy a tablet recently. However, the situation might change significantly when the new Surface Pro came out in 2014.

My First Blog

This is a testing first blog of my BLOGGER~~~