All these price reductions lead me to believe the party's over with high AppStore sales rates?
Hehe, I just posted a screen shot of my current iPhone top 13 list and I included a rant about how I think Galcon was way too expensive (even though I think it's a great game). Then I see this post. It's a total bargain at $5.
So many of the $9.99 apps are overpriced (case in point - retro pole position). That price should really only be seen with top quality in-depth apps, not pick up and play apps with very basic gameplay.
(in my opinion).
How pissed am i, i bought this only 2 bloody days ago :( , it's great game though, i've been playing it constantly.
It's a shame they don't announce price reductions a few days before they do them or something.
The colorblind option was the final straw for me. Really nice to finally see a gaming platform care about colorblind people so much. Getting this now. :)
This really my favourite iphone game. A must buy. The graphics are old school but the gameply is rock solid. Now I want to see liquid war on the iphone! http://www.ufoot.org/liquid...
Trism also has a color-blind mode, as well. I agree, it is nice to see developers making their game more accessible. They deserve our support and praise.
I'm legally blind, and there are some games that are just downright hard to read and enjoy. Case in point, Diner Dash. :(
I would be upset about the rather large price drop, but I've been enjoying the game since the day it was launched - I think I've gotten that extra $5 worth of enjoyment out of it in the past two months. ;)
That said, it's great to see another developer setting a good example by lowering prices to something more reasonable. It really irks me that everyone seems to think their apps are somehow worth $9.99, when in reality most are not. Just my opinion.
Awesome, I was going to but it this weekend but got busy. Now I have no excuse. I'm going to be picking up this and Blue Skies shortly.
Gaaaah! When I was looking at this game I had thought that it was worth about $5 and for a long time I decided not to buy because I figured the price would come down. Last week, however, I finally broke down and bought it--of course, right before the price finally drops.
Oh well, it is a great game. Hoping it will occupy a few hours of my plane ride to Uganda.
My favorite game. I plan to sit at Krystal's during lunch and play the net game again.
I just opted to buy this this morning when I saw the price drop. So far it's great, but I haven't played a lot yet and haven't tried net play.
i bought this game at it's launch for 9.99 and i love it so much. the developer has REALLY gone above and beyond when it comes to updates IMO. i would gladly pay 9.99 again for it....i see no need for a price drop other than to get more people to d/l it to help boost internet play. A++ game.
Argh, these price drops are maddening. Kind of makes me not want to buy anything for a bit. Seems like anytime I buy something on the app store, it drops in price lol
This is only good for the short term, but eventually bad for the whole AppStore ecosystem. People will now think twice before buying games at their original prices hurting indies and big devs alike. Sure you can say it's good for consumers but this will just leave the whole Appstore with subpar games by mediocre devs.
The thing that interests me is how are developers to get their game/app noticed more than for just a few days after its released? initial sales are going to be high then drop like a brick. With a rediculous amount of apps released every day they have to do something to stimulate sales of older apps.
Still showing as £5.99 in uk appstore.
Hehe, I had been holding out on buying this one until the price dropped. Well I was setting up a new computer last Saturday and I accidentally cleared my apps, so I was "buying" all my old apps. Well long story short in my click fest I accidentally bought this one! And I **KNEW** that the second I bought it, it would drop in price. Oh well, I put in for a refund and if I get it I'll repurchase - as $5 seems more than fair. If I don't then well these things happen.
@kevlar
As with any business, they can advertise. If the Galcon developer had spent up to $5 to acquire a new customer, they would have done just as well spending that money on advertising and could have made more on collateral sales.
arn
@am
Where should i be advertising?
Thanks! -Phil
hey phil. any apple, iphone publications. Google adwords is a relatively easy place to start, but you have to manage your keywords reasonably well. I don't know your financials, but app store sales are relatively low margin so you have to be relatively careful you don't blow past your profits. That being said, increasing your ranking will help your sales (the collateral sales, I was talking about) because getting higher on the Apple top sales list is more "free" advertising.
The beauty of online advertising is you know exactly how much money you are spending to acquire a new customer. So for your $4.99 app, of which you make $3.49, you can spend up to $3.49 to acquire a new customer before you get into break even territory. So depends on how well you can convert potential customers.
fyi, I do know of one app dev who has clawed his way up to relatively high on the rankings through the use of online advertising (and still making a profit).
disclaimer: this, of course, is from someone who runs a website, which in essence is part of the ad sales business. :) ( toucharcade doesn't have direct ad sales yet, but it's in the works)
arn
it STILL showing as £5.99 in uk appstore.
Well, I can only speak for myself, and that is that I didn't buy Galcon, in spite of all the good reviews, at $10, as I was just too unsure about it at that price. Maybe eventually I would have bought it, but maybe it just would have gotten forgotten. Once it hit $4.99 I bought it. Had I paid $10 for it, in retrospect I probably would have been fine with it, but there was no way for me to know that ahead of time, not without a decent free demo available. So my question to the developer is, why didn't you put out a free demo?
I still suggest you put out a demo. There are many who won't buy anything without one. For me that's true for pretty much anything over $5. I think it's rather foolish that the AppStore wasn't designed around demos in the first place - demos should be downloadable from the full app listing, and there should be a built in mechanism for purchasing and upgrading to the full version, including preserving game progress, high scores, etc, and removing the demo version.
Awesome, more multiplayer victims. :D
There's several significant business reasons demos come out later than the initial release. And if you don't like the $10 price point, don't pay it. EA and other big players don't get the message when people keep paying $10 and pushing their games in to the top 25.
yes, demo is another good marketing strategy... :)
The more good quality games we see at $9.99 (spore, asphalt, star wars, etc), the more we'll see such price reductions for games like these.
Competition rocks!
I bought it some time ago for the full price and it's one of the few games I don't mind the pricedrop. I'm glad to support a great developer who delivers big updates for free.
Everyone should buy this great game now!
I just bought galcon after the price drop, and I think it's fantastic. Nice quick games, with good replayability (is that a word?). Playing on the net is great.
Hi, sorry for asking this enquiry here, but I couldn't find a contact form or something so I assumed I could I leave my inquiry here. I run a blogengine blog but I am getting bigger amounts of spam. I see u use wordpress, is it trouble-free to control spam with wordpress or doesn't it make any difference? I hope you will respond to my comment or maybe send me an email with your answer if you don't want to approve the comment. Best regards, Annie
All these price reductions lead me to believe the party's over with high AppStore sales rates?
Hehe, I just posted a screen shot of my current iPhone top 13 list and I included a rant about how I think Galcon was way too expensive (even though I think it's a great game). Then I see this post. It's a total bargain at $5.
If anyone is interested, here is that list of my fave games http://www.flickr.com/photo...
Ahhhhh, don't ya just love market competition!
So many of the $9.99 apps are overpriced (case in point - retro pole position). That price should really only be seen with top quality in-depth apps, not pick up and play apps with very basic gameplay.
(in my opinion).
How pissed am i, i bought this only 2 bloody days ago :( , it's great game though, i've been playing it constantly.
It's a shame they don't announce price reductions a few days before they do them or something.
The colorblind option was the final straw for me. Really nice to finally see a gaming platform care about colorblind people so much. Getting this now. :)
This really my favourite iphone game. A must buy.
The graphics are old school but the gameply is rock solid.
Now I want to see liquid war on the iphone!
http://www.ufoot.org/liquid...
Trism also has a color-blind mode, as well. I agree, it is nice to see developers making their game more accessible. They deserve our support and praise.
I'm legally blind, and there are some games that are just downright hard to read and enjoy. Case in point, Diner Dash. :(
I would be upset about the rather large price drop, but I've been enjoying the game since the day it was launched - I think I've gotten that extra $5 worth of enjoyment out of it in the past two months. ;)
That said, it's great to see another developer setting a good example by lowering prices to something more reasonable. It really irks me that everyone seems to think their apps are somehow worth $9.99, when in reality most are not. Just my opinion.
Awesome, I was going to but it this weekend but got busy. Now I have no excuse. I'm going to be picking up this and Blue Skies shortly.
Gaaaah! When I was looking at this game I had thought that it was worth about $5 and for a long time I decided not to buy because I figured the price would come down. Last week, however, I finally broke down and bought it--of course, right before the price finally drops.
Oh well, it is a great game. Hoping it will occupy a few hours of my plane ride to Uganda.
My favorite game. I plan to sit at Krystal's during lunch and play the net game again.
I just opted to buy this this morning when I saw the price drop. So far it's great, but I haven't played a lot yet and haven't tried net play.
i bought this game at it's launch for 9.99 and i love it so much. the developer has REALLY gone above and beyond when it comes to updates IMO. i would gladly pay 9.99 again for it....i see no need for a price drop other than to get more people to d/l it to help boost internet play. A++ game.
Argh, these price drops are maddening. Kind of makes me not want to buy anything for a bit. Seems like anytime I buy something on the app store, it drops in price lol
This is only good for the short term, but eventually bad for the whole AppStore ecosystem. People will now think twice before buying games at their original prices hurting indies and big devs alike. Sure you can say it's good for consumers but this will just leave the whole Appstore with subpar games by mediocre devs.
The thing that interests me is how are developers to get their game/app noticed more than for just a few days after its released? initial sales are going to be high then drop like a brick. With a rediculous amount of apps released every day they have to do something to stimulate sales of older apps.
Still showing as £5.99 in uk appstore.
Hehe, I had been holding out on buying this one until the price dropped. Well I was setting up a new computer last Saturday and I accidentally cleared my apps, so I was "buying" all my old apps. Well long story short in my click fest I accidentally bought this one! And I **KNEW** that the second I bought it, it would drop in price. Oh well, I put in for a refund and if I get it I'll repurchase - as $5 seems more than fair. If I don't then well these things happen.
@kevlar
As with any business, they can advertise. If the Galcon developer had spent up to $5 to acquire a new customer, they would have done just as well spending that money on advertising and could have made more on collateral sales.
arn
@am
Where should i be advertising?
Thanks!
-Phil
hey phil. any apple, iphone publications. Google adwords is a relatively easy place to start, but you have to manage your keywords reasonably well. I don't know your financials, but app store sales are relatively low margin so you have to be relatively careful you don't blow past your profits. That being said, increasing your ranking will help your sales (the collateral sales, I was talking about) because getting higher on the Apple top sales list is more "free" advertising.
The beauty of online advertising is you know exactly how much money you are spending to acquire a new customer. So for your $4.99 app, of which you make $3.49, you can spend up to $3.49 to acquire a new customer before you get into break even territory. So depends on how well you can convert potential customers.
fyi, I do know of one app dev who has clawed his way up to relatively high on the rankings through the use of online advertising (and still making a profit).
disclaimer: this, of course, is from someone who runs a website, which in essence is part of the ad sales business. :) ( toucharcade doesn't have direct ad sales yet, but it's in the works)
arn
it STILL showing as £5.99 in uk appstore.
Well, I can only speak for myself, and that is that I didn't buy Galcon, in spite of all the good reviews, at $10, as I was just too unsure about it at that price. Maybe eventually I would have bought it, but maybe it just would have gotten forgotten. Once it hit $4.99 I bought it. Had I paid $10 for it, in retrospect I probably would have been fine with it, but there was no way for me to know that ahead of time, not without a decent free demo available. So my question to the developer is, why didn't you put out a free demo?
I still suggest you put out a demo. There are many who won't buy anything without one. For me that's true for pretty much anything over $5. I think it's rather foolish that the AppStore wasn't designed around demos in the first place - demos should be downloadable from the full app listing, and there should be a built in mechanism for purchasing and upgrading to the full version, including preserving game progress, high scores, etc, and removing the demo version.
Awesome, more multiplayer victims. :D
There's several significant business reasons demos come out later than the initial release. And if you don't like the $10 price point, don't pay it. EA and other big players don't get the message when people keep paying $10 and pushing their games in to the top 25.
yes, demo is another good marketing strategy... :)
The more good quality games we see at $9.99 (spore, asphalt, star wars, etc), the more we'll see such price reductions for games like these.
Competition rocks!
I bought it some time ago for the full price and it's one of the few games I don't mind the pricedrop. I'm glad to support a great developer who delivers big updates for free.
Everyone should buy this great game now!
I just bought galcon after the price drop, and I think it's fantastic. Nice quick games, with good replayability (is that a word?). Playing on the net is great.
Hi, sorry for asking this enquiry here, but I couldn't find a contact form or something so I assumed I could I leave my inquiry here. I run a blogengine blog but I am getting bigger amounts of spam. I see u use wordpress, is it trouble-free to control spam with wordpress or doesn't it make any difference? I hope you will respond to my comment or maybe send me an email with your answer if you don't want to approve the comment. Best regards, Annie