Should IOS games be more expensive?

I'm actually comfortable as a developer with the low prices for mobile. It wasn't so long ago that it was extremely difficult for an indie developer to distribute their game at all. I remember growing up with games on floppies that basically begged you to send the developer money if you liked the game, and included a postal address to do so. Compared with that, having a market handed to you with millions of potential customers is the greatest blessing indie devs could ever ask for.

The real question in my mind is why games need to be more expensive on steam. There are no distribution costs (or any other marginal costs) to deal with, which makes it entirely viable to sell 10,000 copies at $1 rather than 1,000 copies at $10. I like the idea that by setting a lower price, more people will be able to enjoy my work, from kids with just a bit of allowance through to adults who just don't want to spend all their disposable income on games.

The only issue I have with the mobile market is the extremist "$2 or $3 is too expensive" attitude. People are more than happy to drop $5 on a coffee they'll be done with in 15 minutes, but a game that will give them 15-20 hours of enjoyment isn't worth half that? When phrased this way, most people I've talked to come around, but that doesn't help that the majority of people out there still seem to feel entitled to "free". Perhaps it's because the average consumer thinks of games as coming from big companies and don't think of the struggling people behind them?

 

But in the end i think comparing PC, Android and iOS is like comparing USA, Finland and Africa. All of the countries have different economies. On Android premium is a nono if you have no brand or name, on iOS the game has to be premium and on PC it obviously costs more.

 

^^ Africa isn't a country

Haha but aside from that, I agree with Zemind and Bronxtsa. Not everyone out there is a hardcore forum member who understands the indie scene and has loads of money to spend.

Panicci also makes a good point in that the 3 markets are all very different machines. So I think right now there really isn't a right answer because the mobile market is dominated by casual gamers, but voiced by hardcore gamers. Maybe the right answer is to keep it the way it is?

I think that once people no longer see $3 as too much, and $1 and $3 are spent at the same willingness on a grander scale, then I think that is justifiable. It's a mindset I've adopted in the past few months that I've become more active here on TA. But I really only do it for indie games because I know that $3 will make a difference.

Now, I still haven't played Mage Gauntlet and I want to get it, but boy is it a little on the expensive side...

 

Maybe he meant South Africa.

 

Or maybe it was on purpose and PC was being referred to as Africa because it's so big and has so many markets for a single platform

 

http://appshopper.com/all/games/new/

I dare anyone to go through 5 pages of the most recent new games and tell me they should just have no IAP and they should sell for $5 or up.
iOS games (and I really enjoy the platform) are 90% or more absolute garbage that I wouldn't waste my time on for free.
The games that are good tend to be cheap to get exposure and be separated from the garbage heap of hundreds of new games released every day.
I would love to see a new minimum price standard, the abolition of freemium, and a proper system of quality assurance on the AppStore. I don't expect it, because it won't happen.
Just to throw this in, I don't think $3 or $5 or $20 or more is "too much" to pay for a game on the AppStore. I understand a lot of people do. Whatever...

 

I think free apps have their place, but it would be interesting if Apple only allowed IAP if the app wasn't free in the first place. Free should mean free. That or perhaps instead of just showing the price of the app, show the average amount each user spends on the game to give a better indication what it would cost to properly enjoy.

 

Do you actually believe that or are you trolling? Free never means free unless it's an older app released as a calling card or a clearly promotional app, e.g. casual game to drum up awareness for upcoming movie, and then those still aren't really free because they're essentially advertisements in the form of an app. Even the short term drops to free are designed as enticements to boost download numbers and ratings gaining the devs a short lasting spike on the paid charts when the free sale ends because of the way Apple's system works.

Nothing commercial can be truly free. Apple isn't hosting these apps on their servers because they're benevolent. People aren't coding these apps because they're benevolent. If it's "truly" free, excepting the very unusual free releases from first time indie devs just looking to see if they could make a game at all that folks like, there is most definitely a catch even if there's no IAP.

I'll take the "free" games that I either wind up deleting for lack of interest or wind up paying 10X the average premium game price on than some sort of arbitrary "free means free" that has me paying $0.99 for the same game I used to get to try for free.

Then you would just complain how deceptive that practice is since the average price paid is near $0. I'm sure that even for games like Candy Crush or Clash of Clans that make a couple of million a day, the average outlay is extremely modest because of the sheer volume of non-payers.

 

I hate what the App Store has become, it now seems to be utterly swamped with freemium. It's hard for the good stuff to be found.

When I first got an iPod touch the App Store was great, most if not all apps came in two flavours, premium and light (or yank spelling 'lite')

This was ideal as you could see if the game suited you, if you liked it, you'd buy the full version and that would be it. You'd get the full game, no adverts, no vile iaps.

Nowadays even buying games at £3+ they are swamped and ruined by iaps that restrict the game and try to bleed your wallet dry. Eg: Star Trek Trexels etc etc

If it would rid the App Store of freemium and iaps, I'd happily take a price rise, even if the minimum was £5-10

 

I think that happened because $4 and $5 games arent financially viable unless the devs have some major advertising money or name brand, we saw how many excellent devs called it quits or stop being indie because of abysmal sales and that race to the bottom in prices.

Maybe those early app store days can be considered the golden age because imo its impossible for companies that seek profit to ignore a monetization model thats just way more effective with the casual crowd, which sadly outnumbers the non casual crowd by quite a margin.

Maybe both models can/should coexist though? I say we worry less about the unstopabble freemium trend and try and support those experiences that are tailored for gamers like us.

We can't stop freemium, but we can make niche games profitable enough to keep'em coming for as long as there are ios devices.

 

I loathe posts in threads for new releases where, for example, the price is stated at £3.99 and people say, "Too pricey for me".

These cheapskates are the ones driving mobile games into the gutter that is Freemium. You can afford a device worth several hundred pounds/dollars but baulk at the meagre £3.99 for an app? It's embarrassing.

 

Not trolling, free should mean free, as in the examples you listed. I'm not suggesting devs stop making money (or I'd starve), but if a game is free to download, but costs money to actually play the whole thing, that should be in a different category altogether. Either "free to try", or "free with limited content" or some such. I know it seems like an arbitrary distinction, but a lot of casual gamers really do think of the freemium games as "free", when they're not, and that's what makes it hard to sell a premium game. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, a casual gamer will always choose the free racing game over the $10 one if they both look good, despite the free one requiring $10 of IAP to play through.

If they make a couple of million a day, then the average price paid is definitely not near zero. Even if the majority of users pay $0, there are clearly many people paying much more than that if they can pull in that much money daily. For example, 30 million users for an app making 1 million/day is about $0.03 per user per day, or $1 per user per month, regardless of all the non-payers.

 

Well I certainly hope they could be worth more.

I think that f2p is here to stay, but that as people realize how difficult it is to implement f2p (see:elevator joe) more and more companies will start to reconsider that model.

There is certainly room for companies to make "premium" $1-5 games. For example kairosoft have done dwell pricing their games at 2.99 and 3.99 with occasional sales. War gaming company Shenandoah also has a small fan base buying its $5 war games like battle of the bulge.

 

What about some kind of system to pick how much you want to pay ,with a minimum set by the devs , as on Bandcamp ? a lot of developers would already be used to that already , as that's where a lot of indie game soundtracks are sold .

 

Sounds a nice idea but i dont agree with that. There was one indie game which came out last year, forget the title, think it was a point n click type of game. Anyway it was free but you could donate to the devs, very very few did.

The problem is on iOS people are used to such cheap games (or free) many of them seem to faint when a games 2 dollars.

I mean on threads where a games 99c its depressing seeing all the 'any impressions ?', just buy it and give it a go ! Its a dollar !

If people are this cautious over a dollar i dread to think how they act if they buy a $50 X-Box game

 

The notion that these games can't be played for free is a fantastic misconception that is made clear by the statistics of how many pay vs don't pay, e.g. there was an article recently saying that 70% of people who have *finished* Candy Crush Saga never paid a penny. That's not just all players in general, that's those who ground their way to the end of an extremely long, extremely lucrative game.

They do not have hidden costs, they have flexible pricing, and you're either willing to pay or you're not. It's a mishmash of snobbery, elitism, and impatience fueled greed that leads so many here to accuse these games of having pay walls and the like. What they have are deliberate impedances that you can get around by paying - or you can wait, deal with less inventory, not have the overpowered weapon, etc., but the notion that you are actually prevented from enjoyably playing the games is fantasy.

In reality, what happens is that those who both enjoy the game a lot and don't flip out at the idea of paying for their entertainment wind up paying to get around whatever particular impedance they find reasonable to pay for because they want to while the majority of players, who don't like the game enough, don't find the impedance that big of a deal, or flat out pride themselves on not paying (a very common attitude), never, ever pay no matter how long they play the game.

Never mind the arguable silliness of saying that the "free" game that became a better game after you bought the coin doubler and paid for the elite character is somehow inherently a terrible thing, but charging *everyone* $5/$7/$10 is somehow better. It's only better IF the actual game experience is better, and I have favorite games from both sides of the aisle.

I don't consider this situation ideal, I think it's fraught with suboptimal gaming experiences because of the necessity of free to play in the mobile market, but it's also insulting to your fellow humans to sell the consumers so short. They don't skip the $10 racing title for the free one "even though they cost the same" out of ignorance, they skip the $10 racing title because it's $10 just to try the game, whereas the free one is free to try and, in fact, the free one will give most players everything the $10 would for free now and forever.

 

I do think that it's strange to see people's comments claiming games are too expensive, especially when virtually all of them cost significantly less than a sandwich. I guess it's just a case where the competition between devs has driven the price of these wonderful apps below their value (measured in enjoyment and pleasure).

It would be interesting to see just how good these games could be if people were willing to pay something more reasonable!

PS - good going on posting this thread... it's an interesting topic!

 

What's your point?