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After figuring out the pricing of monoTouch and Unity, I've found that the pricing will be the same ($800). With XnaTouch/MonoGame for monoTouch I am able to port my games to droid/apple. I am just curious if anyone has tried both XnaTouch and Unity and which one they prefer.

I do mostly 2D games (if Unity had a 2d Engine I would be all over that) so xnaTouch seems that it might be better, but Unity seems better for more advance/professional (more companies are using it, so if I ever wanted to do this for more than just myself I have more options, which I've thought about)

(I also read somewhere that monoTouch is against the new apple term of agreement?)

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4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Try out the Corona SDK. You can publish to both Android and iPhone and it's much cheaper. Plus you can try it for free for as long as you want (you have to pay to publish to the stores App Store/Android Market).

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I presume that you mean MonoTouch + MonoGame (formerly XNATouch). There are several successful iOS games deployed using that combination. It seems that either way you can port to/from iOS/Android, so the question be comes which do you like better?

I believe that the iOS terms were adjusted to permit things like MonoTouch; however, (my optinion follows) Since Apple runs the iOS environment, you will alway be at their mercy, whatever Steve Jobs decides isn't kocher for iOS will be given the boot. with that said; I would probably not hesitate to use MonoTouch to develop commercial software for iOS.

In terms of Unity if you really think it might be a better option than MonoTouch and MonoGame, I'd try out the free version of Unity and see if you like the tooling and the development experience, if you like it go for it and if you don't, head to MonoTouch.

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If they blocked something like MonoTouch, could they block things like Unity as well? –  Spooks Apr 19 '11 at 19:05
I think so, but I do not know enough about how Unity works on iOS to say for sure. All that said, that is why I point out that even as such, I wouldn't avoid MonoTouch if I needed to develop commercial iOS apps and Objective-C still didn't look appealing to me. –  Nate Apr 19 '11 at 19:39
They could, but let's put it this way: When they were making a big deal about forbidding applications generated by the Adobe iOS Flash packager they were simultaneously accepting and allowing Unity apps in spite of the "letter of the law" forbidding Unity as well. If you want to be 'safe' then you simply stick with Objective C. Otherwise, it's really a matter of which entity or framework they decide to make an example of. Maybe it will be the one you want to use, maybe not. That's the price you pay for entry into their 'game'. –  scriptocalypse Apr 20 '11 at 20:22
My understanding is that Apple reversed its position about other languages being used for iPhones apps. –  Alex Schearer May 19 '11 at 18:59
@Alex Schearer : This is true, Unity is now accepted on iOS, Flash isn't because of the security problems... –  Jonathan Connell Jun 18 '11 at 19:19
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I know several MonoGame games on the iOS store ( check the monogame.codeplex.com for the current list ). I'm releasing my second MonoTouch app next week ( look out for Murder Map ). I plan to port the app to WP7 and Android. So from my perspective, Mono and the whole MonoTouch/Mono4Android investment is fruitful.

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While I have high hopes for Mono and the iPhone I would probably wait to adopt that platform for iPhone / Android development at the moment. Attachment, the company which currently owns MonoTouch, recently laid off the developers responsible for Mono. They are starting a new company and plan to create a second product in the same vein as and compatible with MonoTouch[1]. But things are obviously in flux, so investing in MonoTouch today may be unwise.

1: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/May-16.html

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Very true. Those guys are starting up a new company to continue moving it forward. –  Nate May 19 '11 at 20:11
Seems to be outdated now: tirania.org/blog/archive/2011/Jul-18.html –  CodesInChaos Jul 18 '11 at 22:26
They started the company : xamarin.com and are doing very well. –  basarat Jun 1 '12 at 14:49
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