Why are the HD-Versions always more expensive?

It depends on the game...sometime they completely redesign it from scratch to utilize the larger interface, while sometimes it really just is a large-scale version of the same game. Think about it this way: why do most good PC and Mac games cost up to $49.99, while even the best games for iOS devices most of the time don't even go up price-wise over $9.99?

I really think part of it is psychological, people don't think of the iPod/iPhone has a major gaming system, but they think that the iPad is because it has a larger screen, meaning more potential for more functionality, while computers have even larger screens, so people find that there can be even more potential...so the price continually goes up the larger the screen?

Just my thoughts.

 

More content most of the time. And the iPad versions usually get better UI too. I prefer to play my games on the iPad just because it's easier n much more fun.

 

Pixels are expensive. iPads are bigger.

 

The comments above are all true, but I'd like to clarify a little. If the game is 2D or uses 2D elements for UI, not only does that artwork need to be redone but at a higher resolution. The higher the resolution, the more time consuming the art is to create (assuming it's not just a simple upscaling, which wouldn't look that great). For 3D games you usually need to increase the texture resolution and maybe polygon count (for the iPad 2 say), which again is time consuming. Finally there is additional cost, in manpower and time at least, in order to support and test additional platforms.

 

Good thread! I agree that app store content can be undervalued. I guess it truly depends on developers and their budgets/motives. I'm all for extra content and ipad2 enhanced games for which I will gladly pay a premium.

But I dislike gameloft releasing an hd versions of the same game at a higher price months after the iPhone version with no new/additional content

 

Simple: iPhone/iPod versions tend to be way under priced.

 

I agree but how can you justify charging sometimes 5x the price for an hd verision? Prime example angry birds, iphone is .99 and hd 4.99 for the same game. Ok you can zoom out more and see more of the level is that a good reason to justify the price difference though ?

 

Just not as many people have iPads so far.
Take angry birds for example.
If you have both versions and look at Game Center you will see around 500k users on HD and a few million on the regular version.

Some jeans costs 49.99 and some cost 19.99 they have the same thread. I just think the standard for iphone games is kind of low. And i can understand why given the quality of most games.

But if a company spends 6 months and spends 200k in hiring the best people to make a great game they get ripped for even trying to charge a fair price.

.99 cents is pocket change and it just takes a BUTTLOAD of sales to recoup costs.

There are a lot of games on the app store that could easily be 29.99 games
Sadly some top games never even see a dime of profit.
This just makes it a lot riskier for a company to invest in the platform.
Sure a descent programmer can turn out a more basic tap casual game in a few weeks but a larger title can easily cost an independent developer tens of thousands and months of full time work.

Just my thougts as a full time developer trying to pay the mortgage! lol

 

What's to justify? Companies put tons of research into optimizing their pricing - if they determine that $4.99 brings in more revenue than $2.99 or $0.99 on a certain platform they'd be stupid to drop the price. Like it or not people are trying to make money here, it's not some hippy game free for all

You also shouldn't assume "simple" features (like zooming) are trivial to implement. None of that stuff is automatic - people might work days or weeks or months on the tiniest of details.

 

I think that if we combine most answers we got in this thread we have the answer. Basically HD games cost more produce (higher resolution artwork that usually has to be redone from scratch), and also, it is almost a price trend that was estabilished, the users of the iPad seem to be ok with paying such prices compared to the other versions.

 

There's nothing that says the price of a good needs to be proportional to the development cost. Look at hard cover vs paperback books. Does the author need to invest more time writing for the hard cover version? Nope. Or what about the larger iPhone/iPod vs the smaller one? Did Apple spend 1.5x as much in R&D costs? Of course not. That's not how pricing works. (Yes, I understand that in these two cases, the cost of the materials is different, but not necessarily to the extent of the price difference.)

 

Says the guy with an iPod Touch...

 

Isn't high res artwork one of the basic rules of design anyway? I always work at double the size the finished piece will be as a safety precaution. The iPad's resolution isn't much higher than the retina display resolution so you might as well start there in the first place. It's not as though 1024x768 is huge either, PC games have been supporting it since forever.

This is the closest thing to a real answer in my opinion. They know they can squeeze money out of us, so they do it. On the one hand, games are already underpriced on the App Store, so it's good when they manage to turn a profit for once and in the long run it just means more high quality games for us. On the other hand it's rather unfair when the content is the same and the iPhone version is 1/5th the price at almost the same resolution (4th gen)... this gets picked up a lot by gamers around here and could possibly be damaging to a developer's reputation, especially if they don't already have a glowing rep to back them up.

 

This is really one of the biggest things. Artwork has to either get redone, or simply planned for from the start. And consider that early iPhone/iTouch operates at one resolution, iPads are at another resolution (even a different aspect ratio!), and then the iPhone 4 and up will be at yet another resolution, that is three sets of content that has to be created if you want your artwork to be cleanly created. (shrinking muddies up your detail as much as stretching distorts it)

All that art costs money!

There's the whole increasing revenue thing, but one of the chief considerations is cost.