I've added up every price drop differance in my purchase history and in the end I could have bought every app I have 3 times over............... Price drops...... there inevitable wether after a month, a week, days and in some cases hours. For some an awaited blessing, for they ones that couldn't wait there a knife wound in the back. Some devs start off low promising to jack it up, others start off high and drop in a very short amount of time, but someone always takes it to hart that an app thats been out since July has dropped two dollars. I personally think that apple/itunes should not allow price drops on any app eriler than one month (30 days) old. that give initial purchasers a good run at the original price and after a month a price drop doesn't feel that bad to people. It would make the devs think harder on the worth of the app at it's submitted stage, free of updates as of yet. customers could still hold out for a month to see if it drops without random news of a drop. We can only track drops after they happen....this would give us the predrop-cognition to tell if it will drop at all. Why 30 day trial? because thats an apps true test-will it get pulled, or will it need five updates, should I include the features I got in feedback? all thats stuff can be Ironed out in thirty days. and would raise the bar in what is submitted to the store making the overall percentage of finished product releases. So how long is good enough to you for a price drop? wether your on the waiting end or the already bought end.
NO why would you not want price drops, just wait a while to see the reviews of the people who dont care about money and if the reviews are good buy it, then you dont have the dissappointment of buying a bad app, and you get to save some money in the process. what you are saying is illogical and absurd
If waiting a month to drop a price is crazy then lock me up and if you've never felt ripped off by a price drop in less than a month then you don't buy enough apps and have no idea what i'm talking about
Yeah sometimes it's ridiculous how fast the price goes down... Burning Tires 3D being an example, it went down so damn fast.
yeah they really need to regulate the drops it take weeks to accept a damn update but two seconds to drop a price can any devs shed light on the app store-price drop process?
I'm not a developer, but I'm pretty sure what happens is once an app is released at a certain price point the dev hopes to get a certain amount of sales and if there's not enough sales, they look at it, decide on a price that isn't as much as they'd hoped, but hopefully enough to interest ppl that didn't buy their app.. something like rolando being dropped seems to me to be more of a "we've sold all the copies we're going to at $9.99, time to rebuild interest with a price drop"... others where you see a price drop in like 2 days would seem to me to be a miscalculation on the part of the dev as to market interest, and they're scrambling to get the app sales happening before the app is forgotten... there's two schools of how app devs have been pricing, the sell high then drop where you pay a premium for the first couple weeks you have the app, ie $4 extra to have BiA or HoS a month before ppl that would only pay $5.99... or the ones that intro price their app low to get word of mouth and web presence then hope others will buy higher after it goes up, like Slotz.. I personally like the intro pricing because it rewards you for buying early, then there's no hard feelings later when the price comes back down. This all seems very tied into the size of the dev company too, once you have accountants and business models you start getting structures that aren't as fluid.. I think regulating price drops would be anti-competitive, since at that point apple would be dictating pricing, and they seem to want it to be a free market (other than the wonky content choices).. anyway, probably more info than was needed, but yeah.
actually that was great. Nothing I didn't really know but not a lot of people do know these two approaches to price drops versus meeting a sold unit reserve. I'm not suggesting apple should regulate the actual prices...just make a firm "no price drops" until 30 days or two weeks after it appears in the store. If it goes down it goes down and the people that waited will like that if it doesn't go down they can continue waiting or buy, for the people that just had to have it...they were gonna buy reguardless. it could concievably go up as well I guess the point is we all know apps will drop, but after just days or hours it's not very fair to intial buyers. it's almost to the point where an app released in the store on the 5th isn't really realeased till the 10th because you have to wait for the price to go down. because if you don't wait your gonna be pissed in five days when it drops drops 50% and that needs to stop
Does anyone here ever buy gas??? Talk about price fluctuation! You NEVER know if the price is going to go up or down. It's part of life. You do the best you can to buy it when it's low. For the record it's totally fair to everyone. Nobody has to buy an app early on, or ever for that matter. If the price drops, and you didn't wait, at least you got to use the app before other people. If you make a product you can sell it for whatever price you want. Sure some people might get pissed, but it's totally fair. The price should always be the choice of the person that owns it. Taking that right away would be unfair.
I can empathise with your feelings on the price drops, but ever since using AppSniper, I've been very good at watching out for new apps that have a free/low-priced introduction, or keeping it on the snipe list that alerts you when the price has dropped to what you deem its value. It's practically part of my daily routine to check it on the way to work, and send potential apps to my Watch list. I highly recommend it for you if you're very sensitive to price fluctuations. As for your suggestion that Apple freezes prices for a month... I don't think that is a good idea. The sheer torrent of apps coming out (at all kinds of prices) means that most only have a very brief window of opportunity to make their mark on the App Store reviews and get noticed. Obviously those with a marketing budget like Rolando that can afford to advertise or sponsor review sites will make a mark. Those that get early-bird discounts will get some reviews that may say "Nice but not worth more than $1", which may give the developer a feel for pricing. Those that have released a big-brand name at a high price like BIA will be cashing in on the level of interest garnered. When they drop the price its because they noticed that the number of downloads has dropped and they want to stay in the top50. At the end of the day, its all about visibility on the App Store. The VERY limited shop window in the iTunes App Store, and its poor search filters means that obscurity is just around the corner. Developers need as much activity in terms of numbers of downloads, App Store Reviews, and review site remarks of an app pricing up or down in order to stay visible. If they don't, and they're out of the top50, then I think that practically spells the end for the app. I'm at work and I always look at the iPhone App Store Top paid and free lists, but only ever goes to top50. What is the 51st app? Don't know. And can't check either. Which apps have over 4* rating averaged over 10 users? Don't know and can't check either. The only way is to stay visible. Redstar, I noticed that you had already commented on this thread too: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=4035&page=3 (aka. "The app store is dying...") Which means you may have also read the post made by FRAND, who is one of the developers of SPiN. <Quote>: "Once your app is off the top charts, it's not selling "less", it practically stops selling at all. A game company will not survive on ~10 copies sold per day. Confidence in quality is irrelevant if you can see from the sales graph that the game is simply not selling. The only way you can keep your app in the top charts once it starts falling is to cut the price. No marketing, no web visibility, no word of mouth will make a difference."<unquote> I think that answers your question you raised to developers.
