I agree, which is why I wouldnt recommend excluding anyone who wants to put their games in the store. But, adding certain incentives and minimum barriers will still easily allow honest developers to get their apps in, while filtering out the crap. For example, I remember reading about developers that pumped out thousands of apps which simply linked to news articles and stuff like that. Why is the feasible? Answer: because there is zero cost to submitting an app. It's like spam. While there is zero cost to sending emails, people will abuse the system on vast scales. For any developer who has spent their time, money, and energy making a decent app... spending $100 to put it on the app store should not be a problem, but it will filter out those people who simply want to flood the store with crap. True, companies can do stuff like this. But, a company that is willing to do this has already spent a lot of money and time developing their game. This means that it will already be at a certain quality level. No one is going to make a crap game in a day and then spend $1000 to put it in the Top Tier... that makes no sense. The whole idea of why putting out crap games works is because there's no cost. Someone in China or India can literally pump out a game a day and even if some people buy it by accident and they make like 1 sale a day every other week, that might already make the whole thing worth it for them. But for the rest of us, this means we get flooded with crap, and decent quality games get buried and forgotten.
Yeah kaply I agree with you there. It's hard to judge what's good and what isn't. When I say crap I mean the very simple games that took almost no development skill. But even then such a game can end up being fun. And yes there are ways around every rule. There is probably no way to change things. But I still think that AlienSpace has the best ideas that could be workable.
AlienSpace, changing the subject, of your three games on the iTunes App Store, which are you most proud of? They all look interesting. I want to buy one.
Games come in and out of the featured sections all the time, and they represent only a tiny percentage of the good games in the store, so not like that at all.
well the spotlight can only be on a small percentage? how much apps should be show? and how should they be shown to the customer? right now being features is curated, sub section features is sale based (probably) then you have the charts (ipad) with categories and subsections each holding 300 shared spots(3x100 paid, free, gross) so worst case would be 200 different titles in a single categorie/subcategorie (since paid & free can also have a spot on grossing) since an app can be listed in 3 categories if i recall right and there are 40 categories (including games sub) that means worst case 40 cat *200 spots /3 listings = 2666 titles shown if one bothers to scroll down the list to #100 in a category he can expand the view up to spot #300 so "expanded worst case" means 40* 600 /3 = 8000 imho thats alot of sometimes visible and sometimes very hidden exposure. what else would help.. imho the featured sections is even worse to navigate around into the subsections etc. no one checks out thoose 8000 apps the average joe probably don't even browse the top 100 visibility has nothing todo with crap apps, the appstore is so big i would make no difference to the average visbility if there are 600k app or 100k after a very small margin stuff goes down the drain and i don't think another section would do much good because its another tab, store front, section the potential customer needs to browse
What are the 40 categories you're talking about? I see 19 games categories. You can be listed in 2, not 3. In each category you can see up to the top 200, not 300. There's also many apps that have both free and paid versions, so those are not entirely separate lists. I dont have time to do the math, but it's a very small number, especially compared to the 144,000 games in the App Store. My point is that even thought you will still have a lot of apps, it takes time to do things like "curate" and "select" apps for those featured categories. It takes time and effort for review websites to sort through thousands of games to find the good ones. Having vast numbers of crap games is not just a number, something hidden away deep in the bowels of the App Store, those numbers have an actual impact on things. Here's a question, out of those 144,000 games, how many are not total crap games with little worth? Of those, how many are "good" games? Of those, how many can make at least $1,000? I'd imagine we're talking on the order of around 10,000 games. Now, while still a big number, that's still something that could be manageable if you have an App Store with good discoverability features... thinks like curated featured lists, credible player ratings, search functionality that takes into account buying patterns and likes/recommendations from related games, etc. In theory that's small enough that you can click through a few levels and see every single one of those 10,000 games. IMO that's vastly better than what we have now, which is maybe around 2,000 to 4,000 games you can easily find through iTunes and 140,000 games that are in forgotten and basically dead.
i counted all categories not only games and i can see up to #300 not that i ever bother to check down there. the same goes for section 1 main category with 2 subsection(just checked) and one optional. my numbers are sound (on the ipad). and worst case scenario takes doublets into account across lists and categories. as for good games well thats highly dependable on personal taste. i somehow doubt you'd find 100 great games for each game subsection. 100 strategie games worth their money? hmm more list or higher barriers are unlikely to work if an app cost 1000 or even 100 per app i think the damage would be higher than the gain because upping the barrier would mean loosing alot of small indie titles whomare self funded and created the colorful variety the store offers in the first place. the dev who floods the appstore with junk clones does not make a real difference since he is at the bottom too. Earning next to nothing, but then if the fellow comes from a poor country maybe a few dollars a day are more than he would earned somewhere else. my electricity bill is higher than than a friend earns ina month who loves in a easter european country. thoose stray sales make no difference imho . if id earn 5 dollar a day or nothing would make no difference both would be failures. i somehow doubt there will be some appstore gui revolution that changes the fact that there are too many app in general, not good or bad but in general to be able to show them all properly if apple would start judging a products quality with a high standard i think alot of devs from this board would not make the cut, devs who think their products are good enough but probably would not make the cut. worst case would be like xbox live.. where the premium games are the arcade ones with limited release slots each year and the indie junkyard hidden away. apple should provide better way tomthe devs to promote themsef in the store. would be good if they add be the possibility to add trailers to the appstore like google play allows. ouyas obligatory trial phase sounds interesting too, because free trial with iap unlock does not work at all since the customers does not see the price on the storefront and iap sales are practically invisible.
The real problem is that contrary to MS, Nintendo or Sony TRCs, Apple doesn't really seem to test the applications much (if at all). I assume they only run some automated tools to do checks like use of unofficial APIs and that's it. That's the only explanation I have, why so many scam apps appear and then later get pulled from the app store. Initially I think everything gets through, stuff that gets reported in the media as scam/clone/fraud later gets pulled. From Apple's point of view it's smart. They can't thoroughly test the flood of apps anyway, there are just too many. The good stuff will always bubble up and they get their 30% cut no matter what, even if it's from some crappy iFart 3.0. So unfortunately I don't see a reason why they'd want to change the system. For us mid tier developers that is of course a huge problem, so if anyone finds the silver PR bullet, please let me know
I generally agree with Kaply, and the point about there being no difference been 100k apps and 600k apps in terms of discoverability is true. I'm a bit confused when you say "crap" though. Do you mean apps/games that make money but you don't find fun (and so are stealing a coveted "featured" spot), or do you mean apps that are genuinely bad and never make any money? If it's the second, the app store already does a pretty good job of burying apps deep in the store. There are indies that release games and never make a penny. If you meant the first, I think the apps that are on top right now do a good job of monetizing (so make good money) OR they do a great job of PR (so people want them) OR big companies are paying to keep them there (so someone is already paying a heavy premium). I don't see how extra fees on developers will help this problem.
I get the impression that quite some people - me included, to be honest - would love to have a section in the Appstore games corner that showcases the true gems. This does not neccessarily mean commercially successful, but ... special. You know, the kind of game (RPGs in my case) that makes you go "whow!" Like when I saw a dev announcing that they make a spiritual sequel to Master of Magic, and it looks good to boot. Sorry, have to bring a named example here: Infinity Blade. No matter if you like the game or not, the graphics were something new and gorgeous by the time it was released. Flaws, bugs and whatnot aside, IB was a true milestone for iOS gaming. Something you cannot say about the 500th tacky and badly developed Angry Zombies TD Social Freemium clone. Showcasing games that have such an effect would be a great addition. Maybe, something that shows *quality*. Yeah, I think that's it. There is a boatload of cheaply done crap on the Appstore, agree with that fully. And all that crap buries the really good stuff, no matter which genre you prefer. So, having a "this is not crap, but totally awesome" corner somewhere in the Appstore would be nice, yes.
The thing is Apple isn't a content aggregator / blog / magazine, so they don't have time to try new games and point out the really good ones. I think it would be great if Apple partnered with publications like TouchArcade to host a section of the store like "Editor's Choice", where games could be highlighted for quality above downloads / revenue. This would bring these kinds of games to the mainstream. Until then, we just need to read blogs and reviews to find the hidden gems.
infinity blade? never heard of it.. must be one of the rare indie gems on the appstore that was never promoted by apple on their freaking keynote.. sadly games like infinity blade never get featured a dozen times up and down editors choice section sounds great, something apple should introduce.. and maybe add a hall of fame. that would be awesome.. my only problem now is where to put the sarcasm tags and the rolleye emotes
hey Ugly how about you name a rare gem then that deserves more attention? I couldn't remember any right off the bat (my memory is not always the bet), so you just have to live with me using a well-known, featured, big-budget, etcblabla title as example. Hhmm: Ravenmark. There you go, better now? And "indie" does not automatically mean "awesome", you know...
I wonder if it would be a good move for them, money wise. If these "gems" aren't top-grossing, they might not make more money promoting them, but consumers might like them better for it, I dunno.
the point is apple already does all this and i find it odd that some of you suggest things already in place for quite some time. as for hidden gems apple did such features too, "games you never played" or similar titled featuring games they liked but had low sales. themed featuring is nothing new. as for gems i honestly dont care. some games just fail no matter the products actual quality.
I'd tend to agree on a 1,000$ deposit (credited against sales) with each submission. If you don't think the game can earn at least this why bother submitting after all? But that's too late anyhow with the current state of the store.
