people prefer to buy crappy apps for 1$. apps are sorted by number of sales, this way all developers must drop their prices, and reduce the quality of their game. thanks ifart, thanks isteam, and all those crappy apps, they should have come for free. how apple can let this happen? now with rolando dropping its price because it is out of the top50 i guess the app store will die, and we will not see good games anymore. there is no more game at 10 bucks i guess? something must change... what do you think guys?
quit worrying. like anything else - you have to find the quality out of the muck. and with sites like this and instant info, we can be a much more educated buyer with a little effort.
maybe apple shoud sort apps by quality, not by sales, otherwise how will you find quality games? just a few people read forums and dedicated web site.
Gloom and doom so soon? The app store is far from dying. Rolando lowered it's price after it enjoy a long stand near the top. And it dropped its price to 5.99 so I'm sure the devs are still getting profit. Sim City I Love Katamari Hero of Sparta Pay Back(if it ever finally comes out) NFS There will always be far more dime a dozen .99 apps.
You mean rated by review stars? Might be difficult if someone says app won't start because they didn't reboot their iPhone, and gives it only 1 star. What then? It will be forever doomed from the quality list. If this was accompanied by other filters like "minimum x number of reviews" it might be more useful. As for Armen's original post, Apple has to maintain as neutral a position as possible, otherwise it's accused of bias (already experienced with some apps.) They will get even more flak for forcing set pricing, or regulating apps. I too got vexed at one game that had a screenshot of torturing children who hold terrorist info, but held my breath and let it go. You can't have full censorship on all kinds of media. Consumer choice (however tasteless it can be) is what makes up our society. Imagine how boring life would be if everyone was fed the same games only.....
Improve ranking system? Apple should rank apps by revenue - Price x sales With the current ranking system, the cheaper apps have an advantage in competing against more expensive apps for volume. Ranking by revenue would solve this.
One important thing in your post is: "people prefer to buy crappy apps for 1$" Yes. People are part of the problem. I don't have a problem paying the full price (still too little) for Sim City or Rolando, but most people do, because they are afraid to buy a game which gives many hours of fun for the same price they pay for cinema or Burger King. Just plain stupid. "developers must drop their prices" They MUST? No, of course not. They should charge what they think the app is worth. The lists are broken *because* the devs charge too little. I must say, they I'm a bit amused how many think that the AppStore is the cause of all evil. Take a look at other gaming platforms, like the DS or PSP and how it worked for the last years: Every month plenty of games come out, they go to magazines (online or offline) for review where you read about them, you have marketing campaigns and THEN the people GO INTO STORES to buy the games. The people don't go into stores to see what to buy. And, in the internet times, we have online mags, blogs, youtube and podcasts to promote stuff, most of the time for free! So promotion just eats your time, not your money. Devs should start to see the AppStore as a store, not more, and not as a free promotion thing. And customers should start looking somewhere to find what's worth, be it 0,99 or 9,99. Of course Apple could add some more Top lists which divide between free, cheap, mid-priced and premium priced games, like I said it before, but that's only a minor solution. Devs have to take a look on how marketing works on other platforms. We already have a printed iPhone magazine in Germany, besides several iPod/iLife magazines. Other mags like the c't from the German heise verlag even produced a special magazine for gaming consoles and the iPod touch was one of the presented gaming platforms - with featured games. And online we have sites like iphoneblog.de, mactechnews.de, gamegea.com or my own new site, which will launch in a few weeks (http://www.taptoplay.de ). So if you have a great game, talk to them, promote your game. Don't sit and wait for the customers to come. They won't.
The appstore is still very much in its infancy.... its only been live for a little over 6 months and look at the numbers... The problem right now is that there is this race to the bottom ... but the novelty of the fart apps will diminish ... also there can only be so many fart apps ... but look at games like galcon, dropship, space ninja and the upcoming blue attack! .. these are original, innovative games .... things will settle and it will find its level.... just don't write it off quite so quickly
exactly what i said, galcon is a clone of an old flash game, dropship is a clone of an old computer game with amazing graphics, and space ninja looks great, i should try it, but it is a "small" game. try to release those games on DS or PSP... for those who believe that iphone can beat DS or PSP, i repeat, app store is dying. have you seen the next ngmoco games (creator of rolando), topple 2, yeah very innovative!! and a word game with dice like the poker game with dices. but as someone said, supply and demand... i guess i demand too much from a mobile phone
a huge part of iphone owners are not gamers. This means that they didn't buy games previously, and you can't expect that they decide to buy games now. They probably like to have some quick simple game to play in the spare time, but they wouldn't pay for it, certainly not more than a dollar. Who develops a game like rolando knows in advance that its market is just a small subset of the iphone owners... but it can be a profitable market all the same.
Ok ... if you have seen the specs for the new versions of all the chips that the iPhone runs plus the LG deal to supply OLED screens .... the next (or one after that) iPhone could be an absolute gaming powerhouse - outperforming the PSP/PS2, couple that with more RAM etc and you have the potential for dev's to start producing some serious games. Apple has already commited to saying that the iPhone is a gaming console ... It will take time, i'm not saying the appstore will change overnight but it has the backing of Apple and once the power arrives then more complex games surface ... it only takes one or two dev teams taking a chance and launching that big-budget game .... its foolish to write the appstore off so quickly Its abundantly clear that apple has no idea the appstore would explode the way it has ... it will settle
Your look on DS games is too short. The DS does not only have Kawashima, Zelda, Mario and Age of Empires. The DS has TONS of crappy games - like the iPhone. But the crap on the DS sells for 20 Euros as a minimum, not for 79 Eurocents. That's a BIG difference. And of course there are several "small" games for the DS, but they also cost 20 Euros as a minimum! Take this Tangram game for example: http://www.planetds.de/news/Trailer%2Bzu%2BNeves%2B-%2BTangram%2Bauf%2Bdem%2BDS.html and compare it with Tanzen, both feature-wise and with the price, and you see what I mean. iPhone only has one problem: Not many real games. We have good smaller games, we have bad smaller games, but can we name more than five "real" games? No have good kart racer, no good adventure game, no good action rpg, no good combat flight sim etc. But I still think, that these games will come. Real games need some time and the platform is very very young. Edit: @synagence: Power is not the problem. We have more power, more ram, better graphics and a better screen than the DS, but the DS still has better games in many genres.
great news! i can't wait the new iFart with a 1.000.000 polygons ass! it is so funny, people are excepting amazing games, better than playstation ones for ony 1$, lol. no dev will do that, stop dreaming. if Apple does not change its policy soon, the worst will happen.
Why should they develop great games for $1? I think ngmoco or gameloft will continue with good releases at reasonable price tags, simply because they are doing good. You don't have to sell more than ifart to make profits. I don't think ANY game on ANY platform is selling more than ifart. It is simply another category. The comparison makes no sense at all.
Now you're just arguing with yourself. If you are complaining about originality in the app store then you should probably look around. In every medium remakes, sequels, and rip offs are rampant. Which number Tomb Raider are we on? How many Mario's have there been? Dotted between all the crap, all the remakes, and all the sequels/prequels are some games with unique aspects. And some of the ports, and remakes are fun. I love 'Sim City' and 'I Love Katamari' for my Touch. If you're signaling the end of the app store based on the large ratio of unoriginal crap in it, then you should probably start going on about the death of Nintendo, XBox, Playstation, PC games, Movies, Books, and TV shows.
I don't expect to pay $1 for games .... a lot of people do but i don't count myself as one.... Thats what i said earlier .... it will maybe take the next-gen of hardware, and one or two dev houses taking a chance and pushing out a FULL game with 20-30 hours gameplay.... like a GTA: Vice City Stories or something then i would be happy to pay £20-£30 I've spent hundred of pounds already in the AppStore, I've paid £18 for a single program in there .... if i see value i spend the money .... whether its £1 or £50 Also, realise that the amount of profit / unit for a PSP/DS game that the dev's see is actually REALLY small ... the AppStore principal means that the Dev gets 70% ... so they could sell a £10 game (making £7 each) and get more money (per unit) than a game on the PSP selling for £30 ....
GTA does for sure and many other games... and even more in term of revenues. did you see the next release of ngmoco? gameloft made an fart app but it did not work like ifart, lol. I agree with Katte, apple should sort apps by revenue (sales x price), it is so obvious for me now! thanks Katte
you are right. the only difference with the iphone is that people make their choice in the store (for the majority they don't read reviews), and you won't see crappy games exposed like that in a real game store. for tv shows... no comment
