Have your spending habits on the App Store changed over the past year or two?

The moral is: trust Kepa and no one else

You can't always blame it on the devs being evil though. Kepa's games are successful so he doesn't need sales or free promotions to help with visibility. Other people struggle.

 

Well, there are others I trust, but yup, can't blame em.

 

Yeah my enthusiasm has definitely dropped. Everything is new and exciting when you get your first iOS device, but after a while you find yourself thinking "not another endless runner/tower defense/<insert successful game here> clone!" and it takes a lot more to impress you.

 

I've dropped from buying more as each year passes. Not that the games aren't good but seems like most are rehashes of the same genre of game. If something outstanding and different comes out of course its a bought game but as it stands for now I'm not as enthusiastic and of even any anticipated games on the horizon.

I do enjoy playing the games I've got which will keep my entertained for a very long time and I like to keep up with what's being made but I haven't been pumped as once was over game buying in a long while and my buying habits mostly revolve around price drops or going free.

Of course this is subject to change if an explosion of stellar games of uniqueness come on the scene.

 

The magic of "something new" wire off, as with all hobbies.

I used to spend minimum $50 a month when I got the 3GS. Every photo/entertainment/music/games app I could find was so exciting. 2009 was the year of change for ios:

Skies of glory (personal favorite)
WAW zombies.
Modern combat 1
Real racing.
Etc.

*Then iphone4 and I stopped looking at half-assed indie games and started getting from only chillingo, sgn, gameloft or what was a hit on these forums.

**Now iPhone 4s, I am super duper picky about where my money goes. Now (with the exception of last Thursday) I hardly get excited about anything that isn't considered premium. Only problem is higher value games = more memory = less games.

***We are returning to 2008 with a plethora of "junk" games utilizing better game engines now but still lacking that premium feel. Example: desert zombies, shadow gun. Maybe others disagree but that's my feelings now.

Back to skyrim as well. Level 49 wood elf.

 

My feelings towards this is that the engines are new and not every developer that wants to use them has the resources. So, they may come off as tech demos to gather a following and money so that they can improve on the same game and make better ones in the future. Which is why I instabought both Shadowgun and DZLS.

Plus Shadow gun would have been a complete game if it had MP. What was the last FPS you played that had a super awesome, super lengthy story; hell, a ton of ppl jump straight to MP. Anyways, I think WarmGun tells the MP story pretty vividly, so I'll wait patiently!

I bet Shadowgun is worth more than the asking price even without multiplayer; hmm... I wonder.

Just my 2 cents!

 

My spending habits were virtually the polar opposite. I've always played console games alongside iOS games, so these so-called "premium" games only had their flaws highlighted when I played the "real" versions. I wasn't going to pay top price for WaW Zombies when it pales in comparison to the one I've got sitting on the shelf, and there's no chance Real Racing was going to match the likes of Forza. All I looked for were the games that consoles either couldn't do, due to unique control schemes, or games that consoles wouldn't pay attention to, such as innovative indie titles.

 

For me, I've been spending less, but not too much less. Couple reasons for that..

First, I've been limited in itunes money for a while. I spend less time beta testing and in the promo codes and contests forums, and other than that, there has only been 1 time in my life where I got an itunes giftcard: December of 2009 Still, I never had a large amount of creds, so it hasnt gone down too much. But I'm forced to limit my buys to the most critically acclaimed, instead of anything people call good.

Second, I got a PC earlier this year. Now, I've started to play games on iOS and so iOS console quality games are less impressive to me. In addition, gameloft and EA have really had less hits, and a lot of the time, big releases are major flops. (see warm gun, which was originally my 2nd most anticipated after MC3- which lags pretty bad on my ipod touch 4th gen, so I barely play that either).

Third, my ipod touch was already a 2nd class citizen with only 256 mb of ram. Now with the iPad 2 and 4s boasting A5 chips, my ipod is really feeling dated and all of the premium games lag or crash. I even had troubles running the rest of the Hector trilogy this weekend.

Fourth, I've really had less time for iOS games. I'm taking half IB as a sophomore, and there's usually a day or two a week where I'm up late doing homework. This is a reason for my decrease in posts here and purchases on itunes.

Fifth, I already have a lot of the really acclaimed older games, so I mostly focus on new releases. And with the releases, there's always a couple games dubbed as must haves, but then are forgotten after the next week's. This makes it easy to just be like, I missed a week, but oh well! Look at whats coming this week! No games really stick anymore. The few that really have from 2011; Dead Space, Battleheart, Superbrothers Sword and Sworcery (which people seem to have forgotten in the GOTY thread), Junk Jack, MAMC, Europa, World of Goo, MC3 (which didnt make as big of a boom as MC2 did last year), League of Evil, and a couple more. most of those are from the beginning of the year, when we here at TA still had that mentality. Now, the overall quality is much higher, but there are very few games that stand out as being above that quality while still running well on our hardware. And of the ones that stick, many are not my type of game, so I either didnt like them (SSS, didnt really get it, got stuck like 5 min in ) or didnt buy them (junk jack).

However, seeing as im starting my own review site as part of my MYP personal project (something ive thought about b4, so I figured why not), I'll probably become more involved in iOS gaming again.

Jeez, that was long.

 

I'm spending way less because of the lack of 2nd gen support.

 

Seems like a decent amount of people are moving towards consoles or only picking up heavy hitters on iOS.

I'm the opposite. I started playing iOS games and my Xbox 360 simultaneously my senior year in high school. My first year of college the only games I really played were FIFA and Halo: Reach because I didn't have the time. I picked up heavily on iOS games because of the mobile factor. I could play pretty good games anywhere I was. I'm now into my second year and my console gaming life is about the same. I will only buy the heavy hitters: Mass Effect, Skyrim, Borderlands (IMO), etc., and I play BF3 on my friends Xbox because I don't even pay for Xbox live anymore. I haven't been on live for a year now.

I mean this is a huge paradigm shift for me. I've owned every game system since the Nintendo 64 (except PS3) plus my cousin's Sega Dreamcast and Genesis. I hated my Nintendo DS and PSP, so I never really got into mobile gaming until i got my first iPhone.

Ultimately, mobile gaming is just easier for me to access plus I've pretty much made the full transition from console to iOS. It's just like with TA, I can access the site from my laptop, my phone, or iPod. So, I can post and leave impressions from just about anywhere. If I could only access TA from a desktop, I probably wouldn't be able to be as active as I am.

 

I've noticed my habits have changed that I don't buy every single game like I did in June when I first got my gift card. Nowadays I think long before buying and usually buy big gunners like MC3... Another reason is, because most likely half of the games will go down to free within few months.

And actually weird how iPod is my main gaming console and still I've been spending less than I've used to in the Summer. Might be, because most of my time playing on iPod are wasted on Modern Combat 3's multiplayer...

 

The only game on my iPhone that i play regular since last years release is mc2
MC3 is too laggy on 3 gen devices and not as fun and well designed as MC2

 

I'd say I pay more but I look exactly what the features of the game are. Does it support Game Center, does it use iCloud, it is an Universal App (I stopped buying these HD/SD crap). And I watch review videos from the different App reviewers. If I like the game after all that I buy it for the price it is (not waiting for a sale etc.).

 

Much less for me in fact apart from the odd kairosoft game I've pretty much stopped buying alltogether. quite a few things have put me off the appstore like Freemium titles, nearly every game trying to add IAP, price Increases in the UK store and the final nail was when Apple didn't update the touch.

I'm just waiting on the Vita for the moment.

 

One thing I do know for sure- if Touch Arcade shut down tomorrow I'd save a lot of money.
As for the thread, I'm spending about the same despite a fairly dry period on the store a month or so ago. Something interesting always comes along.

 

Yes, I spend much less, but with a cave-out that I still didn't upgrade from the iPod 2G with 3.1.2, so there is little for me to buy . And I am not one of those people who'd buy something to use on a device that they don't yet own.

OTOH, I never spent that much in the first place, because I have very specific tastes, which don't include the bulk of the most of the popular genres on the Appstore.

To add insult to injury, I was offered a cheap IPad 2 this summer, but turned my nose up on it, thinking it to be an over-hyped, overpriced, inferior netbook. Also, I was waiting for iPod 5G (yea, _that_ worked well!).
Then several months later I got to try my father's for a few days, loved it and bitterly regretted my stupidity.

Anyway, I'll be getting one now and I have such a long list of things that I want for it, that I am certainly going to spend more than in 2010.

From my perspective there are more games that appeal to me on iOS now than ever before.
But then, I am one of those people who managed to miss all the "classic" games being ported over from other platforms and who is more than happy to gobble them up on iOS, inferior controls or not.

I am also playing on my elderly iPod as much as ever, polishing off my backlog before the upgrade.

 

I spend about the same, I'd imagine, but I'm much more discriminating.