We have all gone to notice that high quality games that took a lot of time and money to develop are being dropped to extremely low prices 99 cents. Many of these games that are participating in these pricing wars may have appeared in the app store at the premium price of ten dollars. Game such as Hero of Sparta, Asphalt Elite and many other games taking massive price cuts not just to the point of 99 cents. Rolando is the perfect example a high quality game with hours of replaybility and months of support following release is currently at a price of 5.99 when it is to many disserving of a price point of ten dollars due to the amount of content in the game. We as gamers hold the fate of the iphone as a gaming device in our hands. If we refuse to support more high quality expensive endeavors such as Doom:ressurection we are forcing the iphone as a gaming device to go the path of the wii where only cheap casual games can be successful and hardcore more expensive/premium titles can not thrive. As a result of this hardcore developers will stop making games for iphone because they can not be successful. Do we want the iphone to go the path of the wii or will we choose to support these particular endeavors to ensure we as iphone gamers receive high quality titles. (more expensive games don't necessarily mean better or high quality games i am not arguing that). So are these price wars hurting the future of iphone wars. Are we as consumers more concerned with the immediate benefits of paying for cheaper games or the future of the software we will receive.
Toki Tori joining the ranks Another title like mentioned above has joined the ranks today that being Toki Tori. This is the perfect example. This exact game which i believe originated on wii-ware stills sells at ten dollars. Their is no difference between the wii version and iphone version outside of the platforms they are on so why is this high quality game 99 cents on iphone and remaisn ten dollars on wii.
This has been debated hundreds of times by now. There are two camps of people on Touch Arcade: 1. Those who don't mind spending money on games and like supporting the efforts of developers who make "premium priced" games to encourage more high-quality titles on the App Store. 2. People who refuse to buy anything for more than 99 cents, will argue for days about how something isn't "worth" the asking price, and will do anything for a promo code. There isn't much compromise between the two.
I agree with you and the people you mentioned in category 2 will be the doom of serious titles appearing on the app store and i will be most displeased since i consider the iphone personally a true gaming system.
I am certainly in camp 1, but I have to disagree with you. Developers who race to 99 cents will be the doom of serious titles appearing on the app store. They are the ones controlling the price. They are trying to get noticed on the top 100 apps so they have to sell more copies. Like many people have said before, this could be fixed so easily. All apple has to do is base the top 100 on revenue instead of total sales. The app store would be so much better if they did that and we would start seeing more premium, well-developed titles. We really should just blame it on apple
Here's what I know. I usually buy one $60 console game every two months but since these pricewars took off, I spent a $120 so far on $1-$5 apps and love every game I bought. It was very reinforcing and I bought premium titles like fast, doom and real racing that I really wanted and that I felt truly warranted the higher price as well. A few dollars for a game is chump change. Basically iPhone debs earned and got $150 from me in a month. Console game developers take six months to get me to spend that much money on games. With 50 million idevice owners If even 2 percent of them did the samething that's great news for developers.
The only one that win out of a price war is $0.99. There is just too many Indie out there and more coming everyday in App Store to meet a pricing standard between each others. Big studio is trying to compete with mini indie who top the store with their one week work. Premium category is the only solution now. Similar to staff pick but quality product will be listed in premium section and within it, theres similar sorting/category function for browsing.
App store is completely different than your standard brick and mortar or online store. ANYONE can develop for the iPhone and release their games. The market can be hugly saturated with games (and it is). Which is why price point is a huge factor. There are a ton of iDevices out there, people know that, devs know that. If you sell your game for $10 or $1 you'll probably get more people trying it out for the $1 price tag. 2 million people buy that game at $1 andyou're rolling in cash. Again, the reason these high cost developers are selling their expensive games for so cheap is because they need people to buy it to make money and because the market is so saturated with clone games, your game can be outsold simply because it's at $1 as opposed to $2. If anyone could develop for the Wii market or xbox 360 and get published with the same ease as the iPhone then you'd see a ton of $1 games on their too.
This is ridiculous. I'm getting really sick of people saying "99 cent games are killing the market!". Please shut up. You can't control the market. Consumers as a whole choose what they want to buy, not you as an individual. Developers will need to accomodate to that, and if that means making 99 cent games, so be it. Your whining isn't going to change anything, so please stop making threads about this.
That is not what we are saying the argument is not that 99 cent games kill The market. Quite the contrary i love 99 cent games i have a slew of games that were 99 cents. The argument is that if we refuse to support premium high quality titles becuz they are at a ten dollar price point. We are forcing devs to drop their prices on their games. Toki tori, hero of sparta, and many others. If we are not willing to support endeavors like doom:ressurection. Just be prepared to see titles like that dwindling. Rolando 1 and 2 came at ten dollar pricepoints. BOth being loaded with tens of hours of content and support months after release. Disserving of a premium price. If we want more premium titles expect to pay a premium pricee. The person i quoted is rite about one thing consumers decide the market. If u want a device similar to the wii saturated with microgames that is up to us how serious of a game device do YOU as the consumer want the iphone to be???
Consumers aren't dumb though. They can tell the difference in presentation and production values between a .99 cent brick breaker variant and doom resurrection. You will never ever see Doom: R at .99. A drop to $6 an yr from now like Assasins Creed or Rolando is likely but never .99 cents. Hero of Sparta is an anomoly. It's graphics look dated now, but even then $3-4 would have been a smarter price point for it.
The Market Will Decide For Itself I agree that the market cannot be controlled . . . this whole conversation is about understanding user consumption patterns and making titles that do well when placed against these consumption conventions. The whole thing of raving successes and failures on the App Store is still due in large part to chance. So with that said a little chance will definitely play a part in determining if this iPhone platform that we enjoy will be here for advanced titles or just for the cheap, quick and easy 99cent apps. The platform is still relatively young so don't expect any resolutions to be made soon. We'll see how everything pans out but my hope is that there will be a healthy balance of both simple and complex, cheap and not cheap. Only time will tell.
To the Toki Tori point. That just proves that the iPhone/IPod Touch is not a gaming console, its is a phone/mp3 player. The Wii however is made for games and everyone buys them for games. Because of this you are more likely to pay for games. The reason premium games have to put down their prices is because most people want a cheap game, not wanting a game to become cheap
Price Wars This debate will become more magnified once the larger price apps start to appear...such as GPS. The current GPS Turn-by_turn in the appstore costs about $130. I would definitely like to see TomTom come in and try to undercut that intro price and lower the total cost to us consumers. And, I'm sure the larger companies are looking at expected return rates of multiple price points to see where they can make the most $.
Nobody should HAVE to buy a ten dollar game. Obviously if consumers don't want to buy ten dollar games with actual production value, then they shouldn't be made for the iPhone. Don't get mad about it, there's other gaming alternatives but since the iDevice market is dominated by casual gamers, only cheap, casual games should be made for it. It may not be the way I want it, but if that's what the consumers choose, I can't stop it, so so be it.
It's what the developers choose. If all the developers got together and agreed to never release anything for less than $5, people would pay $5 if they wanted to buy a game.
You get the point though man. And I agree with him. Though millions of people own an iDevice, of the 7 people I know IRL that have one, only 2 of them (including myself) treat it more as a gaming device than an mp3 player. Meaning, we buy games on the regular, spending $50-100 a month or so on games. The others spend about 2-3 dollars a month, if that, and they arn't even usually 'games'. Of course this isn't the standard or anything, and in no way an accurate way of comparing the way the market runs for users all over the world, I am just speaking of experience. I think all apple needs to do is change the way the Top 10 market works and thats that. If it was based on revenue (like someone said earlier) and not how many copies sold more, this would bridge the divide more of people buying Premium games vs .99 cent games and an even visibility of both (or even just change how searching functions, so you can search by price). Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with .99 cent games, and there is nothing wrong with 9.99 premium titles. I think they should both be able to co-exist just fine. So that way the people that don't want to spend more than .99 cents don't have to, and the people that want those, and premium titles in addition to .99 cent titles, can. Plain and simple... Nobody does HAVE to. I like paying 10 dollars for games because they are usually worth it in the long run. Thats not to say I havn't been burned a couple times and could have waited for a possible sale, but regardless, 10 bucks is still cheaper than retail DS and PSP games. And 9.99 isn't the only game price for games. I have spent far less for great games too. I carry around my iPod touch EVERYWHERE because of it's multi-functionality. I love having games on it too, it just makes it that much more of a handy-to-have system. I know it's not dominatly a game system, but pushing the hardware is proving that it is a beast of a machine, and can do some great things. So why the f*ck not lol. That's my .02 though. *shrugs*
