If a game only supports iPhone (and iPod Touch) any sales will effect it's position in the iPhone charts. If a game only supports iPad, it's sales will only effect it's position in the iPad charts. If a game supports both, which chart gets the sale?, it seems to me that from iTunes, when you buy an app with the little white cross on the grey background, iTunes doesn't know what you are going to install it on so which chart gets the sale? It seems to me that the only fair thing to do would be to add the sale to both charts but, if this was the case, wouldn't the iPad charts be full of unified apps appearing very high thanks to iPhone sales? A quick look at the iPad charts suggests very strongly that this isn't the case as they are pretty much dominated by 'HD' versions. Does anyone have any idea how this works?
For universals, only downloads directly from the iPad count towards iPad ranks. Downloads from the iPhone/iPod and downloads from iTunes count towards iPhone ranks only. https://devforums.apple.com/thread/44393?tstart=0
That's kind of sad. So if I want my game to show up on the iPad chart I'd be better off releasing an iPad only version. Surely Apple should be encouraging unified apps?
Nah, there getting a percentage the same as all of us, so if there is an iPhone version at $0.99 and an iPad version at $1.99 then they make more cash from the iPad users than a single unified one at $0.99... And I'm hoping the "glass price ceiling" will be a little higher for iPad games than iPhone games...
The problem with this logic is that by all counts, Apple uses app sales to make money on hardware, not the other way around. I don't think they make that much on apps compared to hardware sales. I too would have hoped unified apps counted in both places. I was planning on making my next release a unified app, but this kind of changes my opinion. I guess it depends what's more valuable: customer goodwill or iPad chart position. If I understand correctly, it sounds like any iPad sales would actually cannibalize my iPhone rank as well.
The update to our game, Blood & Honor, which includes universal support, came out today so I'll be able to see how the ranking works first hand and how it affects sales... Still, its a shame if the rankings are disadvantageous to universal apps, considering most universal apps are made universal to help out customers.
If I were releasing a universal app now, I would try and fit a statement about it being universal in the short part of the app description that appears by default. Hopefully as users get more familiar with the situation they will get used to checking the teeny tiny "Compatible with..." statement that is so easily missed.
After getting to spend some time around iPad owners and consensus among iPad users on forums (planning to get one my own this week), I haven't found a single one who downloads apps to iTunes and then syncs to their iPad. It seems the iPad experience is so good and the device so snappy they will always download their apps straight from the iPad itself. So it's made me wonder if this chart decision by Apple is not as disadvantageous to Universal apps as we initially thought. I wouldn't be surprised if it was discovered that less than 0.5% of iPad owners purchased apps off iTunes and then 'sunk' them to their iPad. And those 0.5% (or however big percentage) will still count toward overall iPhone app ranking anyway. Just thought this might be worth mentioning in this thread. I was just as annoyed when I first about Apple's decision, but it really surprised me how people are tending to use their iPads, which is quite different from how people typically would use iPhones and iPod touches.
