Friend sent me this gizmondo article about the possible fall of good quality games on the appstore. It has been on my mind the past few days anyways, but I can forsee me buying less and less games since they will probably be involving less and less quality. I know this subject is constantly debated all the time, but whatever, it is a big ass deal for a lot of us who wanted the iPhone/iPod touch to be taken seriously as a gaming device. And I don't blame developers for being scared of putting hard earned time and money into projects that they feel will flop on the AppStore. I feel, and it really sucks, that the fall of the AppStore is because of majority of people would rather have 10 $1 dollar games vs. 1 $10 dollar game. Don't get me wrong, I love my .99 cent games but that's not all there is out there, and it leaves me wanting more. I don't mind shelling out a couple extra bucks for a game that will hold my attention longer than 30 minutes. I don't know what do you guys think? I don't think the AppStore is going to ground out at all games ending up at .99 cents or anything anytime soon or anything like that, it just sucks when you know more and more developers are holding off/ canning more and more projects simply because they are afriad to invest in it due to the crowd-expected .99 cent price mark. It can never really mean anything good, at least for people like me who get inevitably tired of PC-Based flash games that you could probably find on the internet for free.
I may be pessimistic, but I have the same fear...we may be in the golden age of iDevice gaming. If people will only pay $.99 for games, we're going to be stuck with fart apps and idiot tests. I want premium games, and am willing to pay premium prices.
It all comes down to the appstore needing a way to show off the premium products, whether it is the premium games section or something else. It is in a huge need of a way to differentiate the the good from the bad.
$0.99 does seem to be the new price benchmark, look at all the once-$10 gameloft games that have fallen to a dollar
but look at the size and access to the market, and such a low barrier to entry selling 99 cent games, you can easily sell 100,000 to a 1,000,000 copies if the game is even slightly worth it, but if you pitch it at 9.99, you might sell 10,000 to 100,000
Apple is said to be reworking the appstore category system for the top 100, implementing things like top 100 revenue. This should help
I had a similar conversation with a developer just yesterday, and I have the same fear that everyone seems to have with the quality of games. It seems if you make a quality game and you even attempt to deviate from the $.99 model, you face an uphill battle which is really sad. When I read posts from others who rip into devs because they won't budge (I've seen plenty here in the TA forum), the long-term effect is that quality will be affected. Whether you're an indie or a large gaming company, you simply cannot devote resources to the iPhone/iPod Touch platform knowing the low potential ROI. On paper, it's easy to calculate that you can make a profit based on volume. In practice, that's a difficult proposition especially when you consider how screwed the iTunes store is when it comes to marketing. Devs are responsible or should be for their own marketing, but Apple doesn't do them any favors either. In addition, I think consumers of iTune games tend to be even more critical and more demanding than your typical gamer. Seriously, I see some outlandish demands for a game someone just paid so little for. It goes back to this sense of entitlement when it comes to price and what should be in a game. What dev needs that...and I'm afraid more are thinking "I don't".
The iPhone and iPod touch currently aren't considered as serious gaming devices, and this view is being shared by both consumers and devs. Someone (or several people more likely) is gonna have to break the mold and release full-fledged games if the 99c barrier is to be broken, but I honestly don't see that happening.
Apple are working on the App Store, they are aware of the problem. How long it will be before a solution comes along is anyone's guess but I think there is hope for those of us who hang in there.
Here's an interesting article from July 19 that appeared on the Industry Standard site where a developer discusses his odyssey through the iTunes' approval process. While some of it is pure opinion and conjecture, it does provide insight into the Apple review process and how some of its controls may be hindering things. http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/07/20/iphone-app-store-roulette-tale-rejection?page=0%2C0
Yeah that's just about the same way I feel. I have seen some dev's releasing what looked to be decent 1.99 and 2.99 games, and get attacked by several members saying "Hmmm. I would like to try this but 1.99 is too much." Wtf? Are you kidding me? I mean I understand that everyone has a budget and not everyone can afford all games. I don't have the mentality of "If I can afford a 2.99 game, everyone can!" but people seem to be missing out on great games that yeah, may be a few f*ckin dollars over the .99 cent benchmark, but if you can buy 7 of these little games, why not pay a few more for even better games? Makes no sense to me. Then again as long as people are happy with thier piece of sh!t .99 cent 15 minute time wasters, then there is just no chance for anything to make it successfully. I really hope they do the right thing, whatever it may be, when they change the way the appstore search top 100 goes about. Because I am sure that has a lot to do with crappy publicity for premium games. I know the iPhone isn't a serious gaming system really, and I try not to treat it as such, since I only let myself down when expecting more and more premium games. But the truth is, there are games currently breaking the mold of what the iDevices can do. From graphical/technical splendours like Real Racing and Doom Ressurection, to a host of the most unique control styles in the industry like Rolando 1/2 and Knights Onrush, I don't want to see this system, with the potential of being a real gaming platform, sitting on games that I can play over the internet for free. That's all...
For me, this is the most shocking part of the whole deal. Before the iPhone, we bought video games and paid anywhere between $30-60. My group of friends used to be huge PC gamers, and PC games always shipped with bugs or other strange feature omissions. Oddly enough, we never felt compelled to make demands to the developers or complain as loud as we could on whatever forums we could find... And these games were often fifty times the price of an iPhone game. There are people on this forum who seem to never be happy with anything they buy, and I don't know if just being an unhappy whiner is their gimmick and they're trolling us, or these people are being serious. Also, the remarkable level of scrutiny that goes in to a 99 cent purchase is often unbelievable and I just can't imagine people having this same intense analytical purchasing mentality anywhere else in the real world. I would think most normal people would just buy a drink to go with their lunch instead of heavily weighing the value of 16 ounces of Dr. Pepper against other available soft drinks. Either way, it's an amazing phenomenon and this race to the bottom of the pricing structure hasn't helped anyone.
Yeah, the thing is the iPhone (and especially the 3GS) really has what it takes to be a serious gaming system. Sure, it lacks physical buttons, but developers who have embraced the control methods available with the iPhone have produced amazing products by breaking the virtual D-Pad mold. Take a game like Baseball Slugger. You can be sitting on a train playing over the cellular data network in a realtime multiplayer match with someone on the opposite side of the planet, and get matched up with another person from an equally exotic location nearly instantly after that match is over. Ngmoco's LiveFire, KillTest, or whatever they're calling it now expands on this and you can be instantly alerted to an incoming multiplayer challenge while you're walking down the street and seconds later get thrown in to a realtime multiplayer death match with people from all over the world. This kind of connectivity can really take gaming to the next level, but unfortunately, innovative projects require both development cycles and budgets that are completely unrealistic when the end product must be sold for 99 cents to even stand a chance in the market. (And to avoid the negative publicity as price whiners come out of the woodwork crying that anything more than that is "overpriced" or "not worth it.") It's pretty sad really, it's like taking a system like the PS3 and instead of embracing the power of the cell processor you just release games you could have played on your NES. I really, really, really hope the rumors that came out of that Apple conference call yesterday come to fruition and the App Store changes enough that your success isn't directly related to whether or not you can crack in to the top 100.
Damn. This is a nightmare. What's going to become of Gang$tar: West Coast Hustle, or NgMoco's FPS, or Dexter?
A better question is what's going to happen when EA figures out that games like Zombies & Me are far more profitable to produce with significantly less risk than games like Need For Speed?
Indeed. But I was just worried about the awesome upcoming games that might not make it because of this. But you're right about that as well. It's just all bad with that idea. A turn for the worse.
Definitely. Like I said, its absolutely rediculous how whiney people are with iPhone games. I mean I understand there is a point where some people need to complain, but it's true. No one seems to be f*cking happy with anything they buy. It's like they only buy games to play them for 10 minutes, then spend the rest of their time complainging about it on TA. It's just really despressing. I love the iDevice games. They can go with me anywhere, and I love that mobility. I don't tend to think of it as a gaming platform yet, even though I want it to be so badly... It definitely can be, that's for sure. I just think there are just far too many casual gamers than hardcore gamers. And with that comes more people only willing to pay 99 cents for games vs us who are willing to throw down 10 bucks on a bad ass game. This was even more of a fear for me. When I saw that they were going to start investing in the .99 cent games market, all I could think of is "F*ck. Nothing good is going to come of this." That game looked kind of boring anyways, but then again that's about most of the .99 cent games.
