florbastang, you are entitled to your opinion about the game (as uninformed as it is). You, however, know nothing about the people who have picked this up and are currently enjoying it, and have no reason to call us "drooling fanboys" and dupes. I could craft a thoughtful response to the whole "tech demo" issue, and I could question how would you know how long it plays, but, frankly, why bother. If you don't like it, don't buy it. And, on a personal note, you can go to hell.
*sighs They are a dollar now yes, but they had been out for months in some cases at the higher price points. Things go lower in price over time. DOOM Resurrection will be the same. But that doesn't mean that $10 is a "rip off" as all the games you mentioned were $10 at one point and sold quite well at that price point. Y'know...reading isn't just reading the words on the page, but trying to get some sort of understanding of said words. I think you need more time in the oven, kiddo...you ain't done yet. But, again, those games have been out for quite some time. Different consumers have different levels of demand. Some consumers, a rather sizable contingent, wish to have things when first released. These consumers, "early adopters" the term used to describe them, are willing to pay more for the "right" to have things earlier than others. So those folks most likely were "early adopters" for the other games you listed. They'll want something new. This game may fit the bill for them, and if so they will be willing to pay the current price point. It would be silly, in terms of business, to launch the game at a lower price than a sizable chunk of the early adopter base may be willing to pay. They'd lose out on potential revenue going that route, and the life span of the product would thus be lessened. But, of course, to understand such ideas you'd actually have had to stayed awake and paid attention during that Economics 101 class to which you alluded. That's nice. But the fact remains that your "point" was nullified. Any one with any iota of sense can see that. And still you try to argue your position. It's quite amusing.
It's now #30 out of the top 50 paid apps with a rating of 4.5 stars out of 128 reviews, including the inevitable complaints regarding the on rails experience. Not too bad for a $9.99 game that's only been out for a day.
Find me a commercial game whose description goes into detail about what it is not. Come back when you do. (I'm hoping this will, in fact, mean you don't come back, but as usual you'll probably just come back having continued to do zero research with some other obscure little point to blow into a gigantic id hate fest.)
No...no it isn't, actually. Very, very few games actually ever reach those sorts of numbers. *sighs Listen, I can tell you are either a big music fan or a musician yourself. I understand where you're coming from if you are the latter. Have a few musician friends myself. They believed that sort of idea that worked for music would "obviously" work for other mediums, like, say movies. I recall friends taking film courses and getting productions off of the ground looking for funding, etc., trying to get deals together and how our musician friends would all spout that stuff. It really doesn't apply. Music is actually quite inexpensive to produce. Very inexpensive in fact in comparison to most other mediums. Making a high quality record for an indie band has far, far, far less costs than making even a short film, and the same goes for music recording vs. video game development as well. Actually, you should reverse that. It's far more likely that they'll sell 100,000 copies at $10 than 1 million copies. Super Monkey Ball and Crash Nitro Kart sold half a million at their original $10 price point, iirc. Can't really state many games that sold at a buck that went on to sell a million units. Regardless, it's far more likely that they'll actually make back their money and gain profit if they price high initially so as to get the most out of early adopters as they can, then lower price over time to get those who are more likely to buy only at lower prices. If they launched at a low price, they'd blow their wad, so to speak. All those folks who currently bought the game at $10 would've bought it at the lower price, and that would mean that potential revenue would have been lost. Put it to you this way: 1 million sold @ a buck. That includes all those that might have been willing to pay more than a buck, some quite a lot more in fact. The game thus appealed to 1 million consumers total in that case at any price. It's just that by selling initially at the low price point they got more immediate sales at the expense of revenue they could've gotten from some of the consumers who would've bought at higher price points but didn't because the game was always at a low price point. Now, take those 1 million consumers, and break them up over time. Early adopters willing to spend $10. Then those willing to spend $8. Then those willing to spend $6. Then $4. Then $2. Then, finally, a buck. Same number of consumers, but going this route the seller would earn a lot more than just $1 million in revenue. That's the strategy to use when one wishes to maximize revenue potential and a byproduct of this also increases sustainability of the product over a maximum of time (longer life span of the product).
Never played a Doom game in my life until this one. Bought it. Enjoyed it. The only unfortunate thing about it is the length. However, I'm sure Free Play Mode will keep me entertained for a while.
While it is true that the vast majority of the iPhone user base rarely play/purchase games, the largest selling category of software in the app store are the games. So there's a sizable market for games among the App Store user base. As to whether the majority buy "cheap" games they can "play casually", while this is true for all mobile platforms (and iTouch/Phone is a mobile platform, btw), the fact is that higher priced games do find their audience. There are quite a few $5.99 and up games that have done quite well in terms of sales numbers, and better still in terms of revenue generation. If tied to a "known" IP, the "health" of the software is generally quite good. That part in bold is wrong once you factor in the fact that the platform is not iPhone alone but rather iPhone AND iPod touch (hence my term "iTouch/Phone platform", or the term used by others like "iDevices"). And, actually...there's a larger percentage of consumers among the iPod touch userbase that buy games compared to those among the iPhone userbase (possibly reflecting the slightly younger average user age). Regardless, when games like Super Monkey Ball and Crash Nitro Kart sell a half a million "units" at their original $9.99 price point, and games like Need for Speed, Tiger Woods Golf, etc. sell quite well at that price point as well, it points out the fact that "known" IPs in particular can sell well at the higher price points on this platform as they do have a sizable potential audience of consumers willing to pay such a price.
You mean the review where they gave the game an 8 out of 10? That review? I troll trolls, btw. I can see the bridge water rolling off you.
I dont know why you call 8/10 bad... But really: Read the review before you say something about it! 8/10, Here's the link!
Burn the witch! Burn the witch! Ah, the informed opinion of someone who is willing to take other people's opinions as his own, then come onto a thread and ramble on and on about something about which he himself knows nothing. When you grow up, you may read (or have someone read to you) about a sociological concept called "mob mentality". To boil it down, some people are perfectly willing to accept what others tell them and act accordingly. Or perhaps, this is simply a matter of someone who gets a cheap thrill out of posting nonsense, frantically pounding away at himself while another response comes to his drivel...oh well, I just fed into your narcissism...enjoy.
Thanks for the link -- seems very fair, based on my experience with the game. (Though, of course, it could be that the folks at IGN are all "drooling fanboys" and "dupes. I mean, florbastang said so, so it must be true.)
Why are you even complaining to us if you aren't buying this game? Great, the game's 9.99 #30 in the App Store right now. 4 1/2 stars. The consumer sets the price right? Well, looks like the consumers like the price.
It's called capitalism guys. You can't worry about the market, because it's not going to change anything. In the end, the consumers will decide what they want and how much they want to pay for it. No individual can stop that and worrying and fighting over it is fruitless because consumers create the trends and that's all there is to it. If the majority of people only want to pay 99 cents for an app, developers can't try to change that if they want to make money, and individual consumers might have a problem with it, but if you're in the minority, you lose with capitalism. It crushes some and makes others filthy rich. Fighting over it is childish because you're not going to stop it no matter what you say.
Did you actually read the review or just the number they assigned to the game? They praised the visuals and presentation, but balked at the shallowness, short gameplay, and lack of longevity. Those are the exact things I've been saying. This only further supports my assertion that this game is nothing more than a glorified tech demo.
And I'd be willing to bet that at least half of those purchases were by people who were mislead to believe that this was a true FPS game, and not some 2-3 hour on-rails tech demo. Just watch the rating of this game drop as more people buy it. Guaranteed. Just start reading some of the 1, 2, and 3 star reviews. They're all complaining about being mislead about the control scheme thinking it was a true FPS game. More will come. The rating will drop.
How do you explain that quite literally everyone who has played the game so far is enjoying it then? Both here, on the iTunes reviews, and on every other forum I follow. Mindless sheep? Carmack fanboys? Seriously?
