The funny thing is, which I forgot to point out, is it makes things like the developer's shrug off yesterday about how 99% of the people wait and play for free meaningless. Well, of course they do. If you've only had the very bad value for the gaming $1 consumable IAP driving your game all along until a few days ago, it's not exactly surprising that people aren't shelling out. Now take those 150,000 active monthly users on Facebook and how many ever there are on G+ and offer them the option to download a small stand alone client for $2.99 or something and see if your stats are still 99% won't pay and if you're making more or less revenue by that model. You can't claim you've got any sort of data if you've never actually tested your hypothesis.
Has anyone considered the possibility that it's priced high because the dev would rather people bought the other IAPs instead which will generate a more sustained income? Anyone? As soon as someone buys unlimited turns, the chances of them buying coins constantly are diminished greatly. With that being the case, charging $1 for it would actually lose the dev a lot of potential income in the long-term. Making the purchase look unattractive could push people to the other IAPs instead, which look cheap in comparison. If you're moaning about the price, do try to consider that a "lost" purchase is not $7 vs. $0, there are many levels inbetween.
It's painfully obvious this is what they're doing, so I'm pretty sure most have considered it. However, I disagree it could possibly result in more sustained income. The sales model, no matter what way you look at it, is just a bad fit for the game. This is a simple pick up game with ridiculous consumable IAP driving it. $1 buys you about 400 turns, $2 buys you a whole 1000 turns, $3 buys you 2000 turns. Even 2000 turns, as has already been pointed out in this thread ad nauseam, is a few hours of gameplay at most. Who in their right mind is going to keep plunking down $3 increments every few days when $7 would just buy the game outright? You'd have to be mathematically brain dead to keep buying the coins after the first educational disappointment with how little value you received for the money. Would Cut the Rope have succeeded if you had to buy scissors to keep cutting those ropes? How about needing to keep buying more birds for Angry Birds? Consumable IAP makes sense for some game designs but Triple Town is not such a design.
Speaking only for myself, seeing the model presented by the Dev, I will not be buying the "cheaper" $1 or $2 IAPs because I know that method will eventually cost me more than $7. So, for me, the choice is between $0 or $7. To give perspective, I would pay $7 for final fantasy tactics on IOS, but that's one of my favourite games of all time.
Love the game. Really good job devs! Just wanted to say that while I think that the IAP in this game is perfect, I would agree with most here that the price for Unlimited turns should be lower (I haven't purchased it, but am really trying to resist!). If it were 2.99 or even 3.99. I wouldn't hesitate to pay. Also, Triple Town is currently ranked 158 on the AppStore Grossing list and will probably climb much further in days to come (they deserve it!). So, yeah, to those guys saying that they would probably earn more if they charged upfront, nah. Most probably not.
I have to confess that even though I think $7 is way overpriced, I broke down and paid it. Perhaps others are doing that as well.
Although nothing much surprises me about the app store earning metrics, I'm figuring it won't go much higher and then it's going to disappear off the charts by next weekend. Consider, it's featured this week on the New & Noteworthy for the app store and there's probably a considerable amount of insta-buys from fans of the web version (~150,000 regular players). When the impulse buys from Apple's promotion dry up and the hardcore fans eager for more TT on the go are exhausted, this game is going to depend on word of mouth and links from reviews to sustain itself, and I don't see many $7 games without the words Infinity and Blade managing that, particularly those that are indistinguishable in terms of production values or game design from so many $0.99 gems in the app store.
Well, of course some people are doing it. I'm not one of them, because I'm acutely aware of just how much iOS gaming you can get for $7. (Say, Dungeon Raid + Mage Gauntlet + Super Stickman Golf + Super Crate Box + Puzzlejuice at current prices, to name some worthy alternatives.) With that context in mind, the devs have every right to insist on this particular price point, but they also have to keep in mind that a lot of iOS gamers consider anything over a buck or three to need to be pretty freakin' special.
I agree with you completely. But, I think its fair to say that we have made our feelings clear to the developers. We have (multiple times) expressed our displeasure and explained app store economics. Its pretty clear by now that the developers are convinced or they are not going to be. I'm not trying to censor anyone with something new to say, but perhaps we could move on to discussions of the game, rather then just repeating ourselves. FWIW, I finally purchased the game because I liked it enough to keep waiting for my moves to regen, and at some point while waiting I remembered that I have a full time job, and $7 isn't that much money in the real world.
It's hard to move on and discuss the game when the game stops so abruptly. It just ruins the whole experience. There's not much to talk about either, there's only one goal in one setting.. I'd like to see more of a variety. I tried reinstalling and it worked, i got 1500 turns again, but I'm not in the mood to play anymore, there needs to be something else to do.
Tannorexic who posted about why this game should drop its price also stated that they have paid exorbitant sums for mole kart, tiny towers, and dragonvale. You seem to be proving the developers point rather than dissuading them. I played tiny towers for fifteen minutes and then deleted it. I've never played dragonvale and never will. Understand I'm not knocking Tannorexic, I just despise "freemium" wait to play or pay dearly game models as a whole. I used to buy a lot of gameloft games but stopped when they decided to jump on the money drain train. The best argument that could be put forward-in my opinion-is that most serious gamers will shy away from this type of business model as a whole. I downloaded this game and would have instantly hit the buy button for a 2.99 or 3.99 price point. Nothing more. I wouldn't drop it below that until a good reason for a sale and then would bring it back up to that 2.99 or 3.99 target. This is a great game. You will ,I think, have other developers drawing "inspiration" from it because of it's simple and addictive nature. They will add more to the overall experience, give a nod to your game as the beginning of the meme/theme, and charge a one time lesser cost.
Nope, its per account. Just open the options menu in the game and click "restore unlimited turns" to enable on any device sharing the same account. And thanks for supporting us.
Did you read his post? He said he already tried pressing "restore purchases" and it didn't work, and possibly charged him twice. That post actually confirmed my definite "no" since if I were to pay that much I'd at least what it on both devices, but now I find out it won't work or double charge? **shudders**
Oh sorry, I didn't process that. Haven't gotten much sleep in the past few days working on the game. :-/ Restore purchases should do the trick. I've heard from a couple people that they needed to force quit the game, reload it, then try "restore purchases" a couple times for it to work (no idea why that is, but at least it eventually worked.) If for whatever reason that *doesn't* help, just email [email protected] and we'll sort it out. As for being double charged, he didn't say that, and that's because it isn't possible for the restore option to do that!
According to spryfox it is per account and therefore should NOT be charged again, ever. Editing due to the situation being resolved as I was responding Spryfox, it is getting a bit frustrating that you are simply ignoring the many posts here that have made valid points. I appreciate that devs need not poke their heads in to support their games on forums such as this, so for you to do so is appreciated. But now that you are here, it is fair to address the concerns of the people involved, rather than pretending like nothing has happened.
I'm all for fairer price points on the app store, but I wouldn't buy this at $7 even on Steam :shrug:
Ignoring the IAP posts, I'm hearing that this game is great, so I downloaded it. After only playing it once, I'm loving it. There's just enough strategy to keep me entertained and the game was over fairly quickly. I actually think the wait to have 150 moves will work perfect for me. I have a job and 3 kids so my gaming experience comes in spurts. Right now, those spurts will definitely include a little Triple Town. I feel like I'm in an economics class with all of you guys telling them how much more money they could make if they priced their games lower. I agree, though. Look at how well Nimblebit did with both of their games. They released them for free and had a lot of tiny IAPs that really added up for them. eBay economics are the same way. It's been proven that if you start your item off at $.99 more people will bid on it than if you started it at $39.99. And if you have a reserve then no one will bid on it even at $.99. I wonder, though, how the real world is responding to their IAP. We're a very small minority when it comes to iOS gaming. We're the vocal ones that take/have the time to register on a forum and discuss video games with each other. There's what, maybe 20 people that have commented on this game vs. the 25K that have downloaded it. Just because $7 seems like an awful lot of money to us, they may have a 99% success rate with the non-TAers. I'm really surprised to hear that you guys are willing to spend $100 on a single game. That sounds crazy to me but really, it's no different than spending $65 on Modern Warfare 3. I have put WAY more hours into Tiny Tower than MW3 but WOW, $100 is a lot of money. [edit]Could you guys imagine what Tiny Tower would be like if they limited the amount of times you could stock your tower before you had to wait? Say they gave you 30 moves, then a move every minute after that. It would take forever to get your tower stocked. You'd only be able to stock 1/5 of the tower, then wait an hour and a half to stock another subset of the floors. Instead, they let you play for free and had IAP if you wanted to speed up the tower progress. Don't forget that this pricing model got them Game of the Year last year. This game really is awesome, though. You can tell that a lot of work went into the design and production of it. I wonder how this game would do if they just charged $.99 for it and left it at that? Unlimited moves. No IAP at all. $.99. Done. I think this would be a hugely successful $.99 game. I know I wouldn't have a problem buying it. Look at games like Temple Run or Don't Run With A Plasma Sword or insert your really popular game here. Those games are $.99 and people are buying them up like crazy. Then the guys here recommend them to other gamers here and they buy it, too. Once you have a TAer on your side, you've got a friend for life. They'll defend you game to the end and will recommend it to everyone they see. They'll add it to their signature, post about it a million times in the 'What Games to Get in 2012' thread, toss it around on Twitter, everything. With that being said, though, I would be very interested to see just how much of an impact on sales the TA crowd brings in compared to the rest of the world that buys the game because they found it on their own.[/edit] [edit 2]I just thought of something else, too, with IAP. No one will ever notice if you change your IAP pricing. It won't end up on any of the websites that track iOS app prices. It *might* end up on the 'Price Drops' thread here, but that's it. You'd be limited to word of mouth advertising only.[/edit 2] -- and on a side note, and without naming names, some of you guys really need to learn the difference between your and you're. It's cool to miss it once by mistake but some of you clearly don't know that 'you're' even exists.
