http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=1816468#post1816468 http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=1839205#post1839205 Just my latest two contributions to the relative discussion. Since I was "invited" into this discussion so politely and graciously. I'm not going to yet again touch on the foolishness of iPhone apps to fast food comparisons, but have done so on a number of occasions in the past. If someone is dying to know, search for it.
I don't know they were doing a promotion a while back! Honestly I don't remember the last time I ate at McDonalds but the thought of putting valuation on iPhone games by individual nuggets seems incredibly hilarious.
Chicken, water, salt, sodium phosphates. Battered and breaded with: bleached wheat flour, water, wheat flour, food starch-modified, salt, spices, wheat gluten, paprika, dextrose, yeast, garlic powder, rosemary, partially hydrogenated soybean oil and cottonseed oil with mono -and diglycerides, leavening (sodium acid pyrophosphate, baking soda, ammonium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate), natural flavor (plant source) with extractives of paprika. Prepared in vegetable oil (Canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, hydrogenated soybean oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness). Dimethylpolysiloxane made of silicone is added as an antifoaming agent. TBHQ is a preservative for vegetable oils and animal fats, limited to .02 percent of the oil in the nugget by the FDA. One gram (one-thirtieth of an ounce) can cause "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse," according to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives. Application to the skin may cause allergic reactions and industrial workers exposed to the vapors suffered clouding of the eye lens (without other obvious systematic effects). Enjoy your meal! But I am really baffled that Gabrien is chicken like a McDonald's nugget.
Irony: a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions. Ironic statements typically imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning.
Sarcasm: A form of humor that is marked by mocking with irony, sometimes conveyed in speech with vocal over-emphasis. Insincerely saying something which is the opposite of one's intended meaning, often to emphasize how unbelievable or unlikely it sounds if taken literally, thereby illustrating the obvious nature of one's intended meaning. Previous edited with sarcasm warning
[Huge Wall of Text Warning!] Okay, lemme get this straight. Acc to you an HD app which doesnt add anything except native resolution for iPad should be free for those who already paid for iphone version. Coz its essentially the same game and didnt take much effort on dev's side to do that. They even had most of the higher resolution assets if they supported the retina display. Thats what you're trying to say right? Unfortunately, you are making one major critical mistake. You are assuming that the dollar or two you spent for the iPhone version is the game's correct value, and more importantly, thats a financially viable price point for all appstore games. Its not. The only reason why appstore prices are so low is because of too much competition from the 400k+ apps out there. Unless your brand name is big enough to sell your game, you have no other choice but to undervalue it to a dollar or two or risk fading away into the pile of junk appstore usually is. So I dont understand how you can DEMAND a dev to give away the ipad version for free when you are already getting the iPhone version for a much lower price than what it should be worth. Now how can I claim that an iPhone app is undervalued and worth a lot more than what it's selling for in the appstore? Ever picked up a game for 99cents (or more) only to try it for 10 minutes and never play it again? Why would you shell out 99cents and not even play the game for 10 minutes? Because 99cents is not worth wasting anymore of your time on a game you didnt enjoy. 99cents is not worth an hour of your time. Doesnt that mean an app that you played for hours should be worth more than a buck? It should be. But it wont be coz there are a crap load of good games for the same price. If they charge more than 99cents, you'll be that much reluctant to shell out for it and it'd be that much more difficult for the game to chart up in top selling lists. And the pile of junk that 400k+ strong appstore is, every app's future depends on wether it can stand out and make it to the top selling lists or not. Also not to forget, the iphone version didnt get made overnight. It may have taken only a couple of days to port the iPhone version to iPad but the iPhone version itself took months to make. And if the value of countless man hours devs spent making the game wasnt enough, they end up splurging 1000s of dollars just on marketing the game. Yet you get it for a dollar coz devs dont have much of a choice. So please, do not accuse devs of being greedy and evil if they want to charge another buck or two for the native iPad version. And stop saying its the principle and not the amount coz thats what it is. Yes ofcourse they are charging you twice for both the 'near identical' iPhone and ipad versions but you have to take into account what they are charging in the first place coz its pretty much next to nothing. And in the end, please realize the fact that neither you or any other gamer on the forum (including myself) have zero experience when it comes to appstore business. We dont know shit about how hard it is to be profitable in appstore. So lets not teach them about their business policies. We are not qualified enough to do that. We can share our thoughts and what we 'think' will be a better way for the devs in appstore, but to claim we know more about it than the devs themselves is a little ridiculous IMHO. Your wish for a Universal version is fine. It'll be really nice if we have all the apps as universal. But then, it'll be nicer if all of them were 99cents. And even better if they were free and didnt have any IAPs and Ads. But, thats not possible. Devs have to make money not just to cover their costs but to make some profit too or else they'll stop developing for iOS. So while your wish for all apps to be universal is fine, your accusation that devs are being greedy for charging twice is completely baseless. They are just trying their best to make a living out of appstore. Nothing evil going on here as far as I can see.
Now that was intense!! This thread proves how greedy some iphone buyers are becuase this thread never fades. I think this thread will be forever going on like a self sticky topic.
I am slightly mad at McNuggets right now. Used to be $4.99 for 20, now they raised it a buck for $5.99. Screwed up all my comparison charts.
I can't wait to see this thread explode once FFT is released. It's been approved by Apple already! Maybe SE will surprise us and release it this weekend instead of waiting 5 days, heheh.
Just wanted to toss in a bit of reasonable critique of what I otherwise largely agree with. The sad state of the economics of the app store for developers who aren't lucky enough to get the high chart + 200,000+ $1 downloads aside, there is a very real critique of the practice of making iPad only versions along side iPhone/touch versions instead of a universal version that winds up affecting both consumer and devs: As a consumer and tech-head of a multi-device household, I have to make choices about what gets purchased, and I have to consider IAP and other issues in addition. If you offer me a universal version at a reasonable price, bam, that's the one I get even if I don't think there are any immediate plans to run it on the iPad. A dollar or three extra for the future proofing and simplicity is a no-brainer. It's even more of a no-brainer if it is something I see as winding upon on the iPad immediately. But, what happens when the devs split their products? Almost without exception I wind up buying only the iPhone/touch version instead of both because, even if it's graphically not as nice running in 2X mode, that is still technically the universal version. Even though many devs (at least at launch) price it such that you can get both the iPad only and iPhone/touch versions for a combined price that is the same or not much more than most universals, it's just not enough of an advantage to have the iPad only version versus double storage on the computers, double updating, and, when applicable, double IAP costs. The practice of releasing an iPad only version along side the iPhone/touch version instead of a universal version seems to be a practice that actually harms dev revenue and continues to depress average price acceptance from consumers. They may be making a few dollars extra from the iPad only households of the world, but that's offset by the few dollars they're losing from households with no iPad at all or both iPhones/touches and iPads.
Actually, my post was in error - it was supposed to be in the Welcome To Die! thread, but is probably just as relevant here.
@IMNS All that your argument amounts to is that because it's tough for developers to make a living on the app store it's ok for them to be unscrupulous, manipulate the system, and withhold value and convenience from the consumer. My argument is that even though I fully acknowledge that it is tough for developers to make a living on the app store, I still maintain that being manipulative and dishonest is not ok. Particularly as, there are plenty of developers who do not stoop to such lows when releasing their product, and those are the ones that I choose to support and ecourage. In case a metaphor helps, I think this practice equates with a taxi driver purposely taking you around the long way to squeeze out a few extra bucks.
