Gameloft not so keen on $19.99 iPhone game pricing

[CraigLaw]

Gameloft SVP of worldwide publishing Gonzague de Vallois says:

"If you go up to $19.99, volumes will go down. If I'd sold Hero of Sparta for $19.99, I'd have sold ten times less downloads, and we'd be back with the video game business, which is niche for very hardcore and motivated gamers."

Read the story on PocketGamer (http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/Gameloft+news/news.asp?c=11652) and decide for yourself if you still think $19.99 apps will be the future.

C

[Vende]

I think people are overthinking this premium store. If the games sell well, they'll stay at that price; if not, they'll fall down to more "normal" numbers. And I don't see lower priced games being affected at all. It'll be an interesting experiment, but again, I don't think it's that big of a deal.

[morscata12]

I think the biggest game-changing aspect of the $20 App section would be the permanent nature of the pricing. High priced games don't do very well now because we expect the prices to go down; because enough customers have learned to wait for the price drop, companies eventually have to drop the price. If Apple were to create a "premium" game section, it would be implied that price drops were out of the question. Otherwise, gamers could wait it out and the $20 tag wouldn't mean anything.

Gameloft's approach seems to be that if they sold their games for 3x more than they do currently, they'd lose 90% of their audience. Only the dedicated gamers (the 10%) would want to spend that much more on the game, since they're the only ones who would really get their money's worth. As part of that 10%, I'm glad that these great games are reaching more eyes.

[Fletch]

That's what I've been sayin' all along...for the reason gameloft described there will never be a $19.99 section, people simply won't buy