[Op-Ed] How major game developers upset my Samsung Galaxy S III Purchase

OK, some of you may already know that I finally had a chance to move away from little Samsung Vibrant and picked up a Samsung Galaxy S III. Normally I would go through how utterly amazing the device is and show you all some video. I will still do that later today, but first I have to get something off my chest and make a rather disappointing showing about the Galaxy S III.

Before I show you what I found, I want to be perfectly clear, this has nothing to do with Samsung, the Galaxy S III or splendor of the device. It has everything to do with developers. Not the average team, small group, small company, or one man show. This is specifically aimed at the major gaming companies. Primarily, Electronic Arts and Gameloft, for the time being. Take a look at a few screenshots.

  As you can see, I have a lot of games that I have purchased that aren’t compatible with my device. This is extremely frustrating, for me at least. How can two extremely large and well established game developing companies not make updates to existing titles to run on one of the hottest selling devices on the market right now? Now not every game by these guys comes up as incompatible. N.O.V.A. 3 works and NBA Jam works. It isn’t so much the point of what will play and what won’t play, it is more the point that games that should have no issue on the Galaxy S III can’t even be installed.

Now I am sure that with a tweaked ROM, rooted and some little changes then the Play Store won’t pickup my device and let me install them. I bet they play smooth and work perfectly. It is more about the consumers experience that i am worried about. We know this has no bearing on Samsung and the Galaxy S III and is more about the developers, but to the average user who sees this, they will blame it on their device and Samsung.

So what is a consumer to do? Well, we can bitch and complain to each other, but that won’t get us anywhere. I know change won’t happen without people standing up for it. So I propose two things. First, if you have a Galaxy S III, or even if you don’t but see the same issue on a major selling device, you fire off an email to them expressing your dissatisfaction. You can email Gameloft at android.support@gameloft.com as for Electronic Arts, they make it a bit more tricky from what I can tell. You can tweet them at http://twitter.com/ea or bug them on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/EA. Sending them an email doesn’t seem to be very simple. Second, +1 this article in Google Plus. Blow up their feed with your comments.

Feel free to list any other games or apps you have run across that you have spent your hard-earned money on to only end up not being able to use it again.