For me, the app store suffers from a fundamental problem. There are only two categories: Paid and Free. Since $0.99 games are much more likely to be downloaded rapidly, they rise to the top of the charts and overshadow games that are worth more such as Rolando or Real Racing. Premium priced games sooner or later have to reinforce a sale to boost their popularity because its far too easy to get flooded by cheap pick up and plays at $0.99. Games like flight control selling cheap and addictive gameplay are taking over the store, and developers are struggling to find reasons for funding a higher budget game because the return isn't good enough. In short, people are getting too much value for the price they're paying. As a customer and not a developer, this is a great thing. My concern is that soon, the app store will be filled with nothing but flight control type of games and the app store will cease to be a serious gaming platform. At present, there is incredibly good content coming out at a constant rate which is awesome. But because of this, devs panic and drop their prices way too quickly. This is good for consumers in the short term, but bad for the platform as a whole in my opinion. The constant focus on becoming popular is having a detrimental effect on the store and the dev's are making the problem worse by reinforcing the industry "standard" of the AppStore $0.99 games. Is the app store heading for a fall or will big budget games be able to compete in the long run with this current format?
Doom Resurrection is #14. Real racing isn't in the top 25 but Fast and Furious is Next thing people will be complaining that there's too many popular franchises filling up the top 25.
hey all.. newbie here but I've been reading enough about iphone app stuff in the news to think camzy has a good and valid posit. however, I think its too early to tell because : 1. apple announced they are going to give more marketing/adversting control to developers which will help even the playing field a bit. 2. the market will correct itself again if this is the case. (If games really are too cheap for the value they give ... the economics of it will work in the reverse as well.) There is enough hype for iphone stuff that more developers will get in the game than will get out which will drive more value above any "yard sales" . And there is critical mass for those that want to download. it'll probably all distribute out along some form of bell curve in the end.
1. They did? What did the announce? If you have some link of sort it would be great. If you mean that companies can pay for ads in iTunes, that will good news for the big boys (EA etc) and bad news for the little man, the indies. 2. Of course, but that could mean that companies go elsewhere (we already have Labyrinth for Android out...) and all you get are simple low-budget apps, which is fine if that's what you want. Just don't expect any under priced games anymore. The problem is how the top lists work. They are solely based on number of sales, and it is a no-brainer to figure out that a good game (worth $4.99) priced at $0.99 will sell more copies that a equally good game (also worth $4.99) priced at $4.99. In other words, the top lists favor cheap games, and not necessarily good games. Why on earth are there games with a rating lower than 4 on a top list? It would be better if the top lists took rating and revenue into account, or perhaps even install time. The top lists would then consist of quality apps, which I think is what consumers would expect a top list to contain. Anyhow, it is a new market and we will have to wait and see how it turns out. Just my $0.01 (limited time offer, my opinions are on sale).
The majority of games sell because they are good. Flight Control is a well designed game that deserves all of the sales it gets. And, don't forget, Real Racing was developed by Firemint, the developers of Flight Control. They have recieved the profits from their little addictive game and spent them on an engaging and deep, serious game. Also, with sites like this, promoting and hyping those serious games, I'm certain that a game that truly deserves it's sales, will get them.
Based on rating is good. Based on revenue is ridiculous, it will cause so many overpriced app. Install time is even more ridiculous. I don't care if it takes 10 seconds or 1 minute to install, all I care about is the quality of the game and the support for it.
What is overpriced in your opinion? $5? $10? $20? If a game would be overpriced, no-one would by it, and hence revenue would be low. By install time I meant how long an app was installed, not how long it takes to install it silly
I think Anders meant to take into account the time the app has been on the appstore, not the time it takes to install it. It would compensate the fact that most apps are slowly (or not) driven out of the top because they're not hype anymore. (edit: written as the same time as post above ) In the end, I think it is important to remember that you get what you pay for. A game like mecho wars sold at 30 $ would probably have been developed with a bigger team and on a longer time period, which means that it would have been closer to the polish and content of Advance Wars on DS. As incredibly good as Flight control is, it offers very little in terms of content. The genius is in the idea and the way it is delivered.
This is the main problem with the App Store, the longer/bigger games can't compete with the cheap thrills. Pocket God, Flight Control, and other 99 cent games (that do only "deserve" that price tag based on content) are what people will normally buy. However if developers keep undervaluing their games, then yes the consumer reaps all the benefits, but in turn brings on a domino affect of developers. They think "Hey, I'll lower my game to 99 cents for a bunch of downloads then raise the price again" but when they do nobody buys. In turn they have to keep discounting it to 99 cents (Pangea anyone?). It's one of those things where it's a catch 22, a lot of iDevice owners complain if a game ISN'T 99 cents, yet when a good game comes out and they get it, they complain if the developer follows the domino affect and put a game on sale.
I wouldn't say that. I'ts more like top list favors popular games which in some cases happen to be cheap games. I'd rather see a list full of 99c original games than stuff like the sims and need for speed. I'm afraid that any other way they organize it that's what we'll end up with. By the way the list actually does favor install time since the older games have the benefit of being around longer to generate more sales.
actually dn't remember where I saw it.. I think maybe it was the keynote speech at the macworld conference or a random article about 3.0. but basically someone said that apple recognized the need to for a better marketing structure for developers with itunes/app store. good idea. email steve jobs immediately. lol but that's the point.... apple could implement something like that at anytime. like when the market starts showing signs of anything like you said...which for now...it isn't as its still in major growth period. sold! where do I download.
It would be good if there would be more than one top list. The current one could remain, but perhaps change name to 'most downloaded the past week'. And one for 'top rated' etc. Install time is not taken into account, it is just the number of sales the past week, not the total number of sales. Otherwise the top list would be rather static.
Ok, sounds interesting. I'll google some and see what I can find. They better hurry. I'm not going to mention any names, but at least one of the bigger devs are doing really bad and I wonder how long they can keep it up, they are struggling. Also, read the other thread where one indie dev decided to release all of his games for free since I was too hard to compete, even at 0.99, with the big guys when their 6+ month productions with lots of polish cost the same.
Something that affects my purchases are developer sites. If I click the link in the Store to go to the dev's site and it goes nowhere, or to a 'Coming soon' 'Under construction' or anything else that does not show your app the chances of me buying drop. If the Support link from the Store fails the chances drop. If there is a video, the chances rise. If there are some obvious fake reviews the chances drop hugely. I mentioned this at the time Zen Bound was released - Chillingo's site is truly terrible. They could so much more to promote each platform and game. As sily as it sounds the fact that Chillingo publisha title does not help that game for me because of their site. It's not just about .99, it's about overall impressions. Devs need to be aware that they are also selling themselves to an extent - after all, good impressions (a 'brand') attract premium prices. Premium is of course a relative term.
Haha, sorry, didn't get it I bought NFS for $10 and feel it's worth it. I bought Zen Bound, Fieldrunners, Sway (yes ) and many other games for $5 and also feel they're worth every penny. However, stuffs like Sonic or Golden Axe is overpriced - and if you just rate it based on revenue, I'm sure they will come before many better games. Seriously, Sonic and Golden Axe are just two lazy ports using a lame emulator that's not even optimised for iPhone. This happens with many big name games like MGS, it's way overpriced. Yet, people still buy them because of their name, not for the quality of the game. I'm sure rating is a better option.
Ok, cool. We weren't really sure if the sites were appreciated or not. Company website, Sway website, Touchgrind website Is it really that bad? Or do you want a site for each game? Interesting to know as it takes some time hack together, and it's not that fun to be honest
I'm certainly not expecting to see some big multi-level site but both of yours tell me way more than the store, they tell me you want to tell me about your game and that you believe in what you have. I really like them - they set the mood of the game. I know developing must take priority and I have no idea what others think but this can be the push for me (I have Sway, Touchgrind just isn't my thing). It's like any other consumer experience - if the surroundings are more pleasant you are more likely to or happier to pay more.
It usually takes a couple of days to do a site properly, and if it's a make or break for you, then it could be important to others too. Thanks for your input, I guess we'll be doing a new site pretty soon
You could just go with subdomains? It would save having to buy domain after domain for instance. Any branding elements can stay the same - which goes partway to site creation already - and all your other work is in the same place.
