OK, I'm somewhat uncomfortable about criticising another developer, but here goes: Gameprom just dropped their Wild West Pinball to $0 (from 2.99). Now for consumers in general this is probably seen as a good thing, but as a business strategy I'm not so sure. They are ramping up to release another pinball (The Deep) game and I can see the point in trying to get as many people as possible to see the quality of their work. (I find WWP simply brilliant and it's extremely polished). However, if you're looking for a pinball game, why would you buy "The Deep" when you can have WWP for free? In addition I'm left with the impression that this developer will make their games free if they don't sell enough copies. All you have to do is wait. To add further insult to injury, people who did pay for the game feel like they've been taken for a ride. In my mind this is a strategy that is bound to hurt Gameprom in the long run. WWP is a quite brilliant title that is clearly worth money. Now, I'm not really going after Gameprom here (sorry guys), but I would enjoy a discussion about this kind of tactic in general...
I was annoyed by this GameProm announce. I payed for it .. and now it's free? I would like my money back. Developers have different oppinions regarding pricing. I'm not for being in the 0.99$ wagon, but others Devs leaded me into that way. I'll reward early adopters and after a while my game will cost more, not less. Dumping prices will confuse guys and may lead to people not buying until they see a significant drop. So, I'm for putting an introductory price and later set the normal price you think.
That's exactly how I see things. At the moment I really don't have anything I could sell for more than $ .99 with a straight face, but your strategy is exactly what I'm planning for future projects: Give an introductory offer for a limited time then move the price to the standard-price and keep it there until the end of days. This way you wind up rewarding those early adopters rather than punishing them. It will also send a strong signal that you should not wait before buying the title.
I mostly agree, but the reality is that it all comes down to getting exposure, and beyond the usual routes (which devs have little or no control over), releasing a quality, polished title for free is a great way to rise the charts and get your name out there. I'll admit that until this game was free, I had never heard of it or Gameprom. Now they're on my radar. Whether or not a $3 game should drop to $0 when your next release is a very similar game, that's up to them to decide and I'm sure they weighed the options. My feeling is that Deep Pinball will do better than it would have if WWP was not free, simply because so many more people are now aware they exist. My own strategy is to create a mix of paid and free titles, and if I do ever make a free version of an existing paid game, I'll go the Lite / ad-supported route, so that previous buyers don't feel gipped.
i dont like pinball games but when i saw this was for free i tried it....and realized that i HATE pinball games.....i prefer my own pinball machine in my basement to this.....i just cant get why the screen has to follow the ball instead of just staying in one place....im glad i didnt pay for it because i would have been extreemly dissapointed as for the marketing strategy the game should only be free for a few days not the rest of the time its on the app store
As much as I like getting free stuff... this bothers me a little. Not a good sign when quality apps like this need to be "given away" to get noticed. A clear sign there's too many apps.
I get why they do it and agree that it will create some exposure. I just believe that in the long run this is a strategy that is bound to back-fire. There is also the fact that a lot of people who paid full price will feel shafted and that can hardly be a good thing. I think your own strategy of releasing a combination of free and paid apps is a much better solution...
Our strategy is also to release at the lowest price that we can stand, and then raise the price slowly over time towards what we see as fair value. Yes, we sacrifice revenue (although, this is debatable, as higher sales can offset the lower price). But, we would prefer to give early adopters our best price rather than late adopters. We do an occasional sale for promotional purposes, but otherwise try to keep our pricing stable and rising. We continue to update our popular apps with new features to give us some head room on the pricing. Hopefully, this strategy will payoff in the long-term.
The problem with this strategy is exposure. If you release at 99 cents and are not getting the attention your app deserves, what will you do? Once you raise the price, the app will do worse not better.
I understand the strategy, though I understand how it might piss off a few early adopters. There is a lot of value in app store cross promotion. I've heard that very popular free apps can drive enormous sales to paid apps. So, if they can get Wild West Pinball to the top 10 free spots, then they should be able to drive a ton of sales to their next pinball game. arn
Yep, exactly. Early adopters are almost never truly rewarded when it comes to software. There are exceptions, such as games with leaderboards where if the design allows it, you can take a commanding lead by getting your name up there first. But usually you just end up being another batch of testers that iron out bugs that made it through to release. With the AppStore almost everything hinges on exposure. Other variables that are usually considered the most important, such as the quality of the game or app, seem to come second to this, which is weird. Like Arn said, if making WWP free offers more exposure to The Deep, then it will only help the company in the long run as they try to maximize sales for their new game.
@pharmx If I'm not getting the attention my game deserves at 99 cent, them I have done something wrong (game concept, game play, marketing or whatever). The problem is identifying what could I have done wrong and correct. Yes, but i don't think we weren't so few. I bought this game at a sale price of 99 cent and I'm not happy they dropping so imagine guys that buyed at a higher price. Really it's a marketing strategy, but this can lead to people stand quiet and not move (buy) till the vendor makes a sale offer. This also could harm the confidence in devs.
I understand people getting pissed off, but hey. You paid for a good game. At least you did not pay for something like Urban Tycoon.
Agreed danny, But it's not a matter of money or what you have bought with the money. It's a matter in trusting developers. Many more moves like this and people will stop or decrease buying. I'm still firm in what I have said: initial sale price at 99 cent and some days later increasing this. I want to be cristal clear with my customers and reward early adopters.
I understand you as well. But arn makes a point. I'm sure the devs won't make their next game free. This was their first game and is really good but is missing some stuff that will arrive in their next game. They are no longer working on Wild West and they felt this was the best way to compinsate for it. Yeah, that's problably mis-spelled. But yeah, I won't be making my app free (unless I can make a 3D FFPS )
If they raised the price to $1.99 would you PayPal them a dollar? When Wild West Pinball went free I IM'd or emailed all my non-gamer iPhone owning friends telling them to give it a look. The response from most of them? "Wow, this is really neat." Wild West Pinball's sales likely ran their course, and have tapered off to nothing. By making it free, they're getting tons of people who wouldn't normally have downloaded the game to be interested in pinball on the iPhone... And if even a fraction of those people decide to pick up The Deep, that's probably a decent tradeoff for the few sales Wild West Pinball would have made otherwise.
I doubt it. Anyhow that just was an expression, I will never ask for a refund seriouslly. But this is not the key point, the key point is that guys could keep away from buying with such strategies. Anyhow this is marketing and I must not complain. But I will not play the game in the same way.
But how many people will really wait to buy because of this? Sure some of the people that visit forums such as TA might. And definitely some of the people that use AppSniper. But compared to the population of iDevice owners...the people that educate themselves with forums and AppSniper are relatively few. Most people just look at one of the top lists and pick a game to buy.
I honestly think the temporary .99 cent sale strategy makes perfect sense. There's tons of games/game genres I would never buy (puzzle games, pinball games and such). But when I see a seemingly popular game on sale for 99 cents, I google it, and see if it's high quality and buy it to support small developers and try out a quality product in a genre I never would have tried before. Free, though, I feel bad, because I'm never going to buy a pinball game for over .99 cents, but after seeing this excellent work and polish, I feel like they deserve some money and more exposure. Heck, I'll probalby buy thier next game just to support them for their excellent work. What apple needs is a an actual ACCURATE rating system where all the high quality polished games get the ratings they deserve. A system that highlights all the quality polished games out there. Would make my purchasing a lot easier. There's no reason this game should have a 2.5 star rating, it has way too much polish for that!! And Apple's system of asking for rating when you delete a product is dumb and assinine. So mostly, only the people who barely tried the product and deleted it after the first use bc it wasn't what they wanted rate the products. Instead, apple should ask for a rating the 10th time you launch an application, NOT when you delete it.
