How much does the ad space on the appstore cost?

It's not paid. But it does heavily lean towards what will sell easily, which means big name games.

 

Yes, leaving lesser known devs in the shade

 

Yep, that about covers it.

 

But then again, high profile titles is what a lot of the punters lust for anyway. And to be fair Apple seem to pick quite a few low-profile developers to showcase as well.

But here's the thing: With the almost insane amount of titles available on the App Store the chances that your app would be featured would be small even if they pulled titles out of a hat. So, what can we small-but-charming(tm) developers really do about it? We can try harder to be interesting, quirky experiment with graphical-styles, stay active in forums, spend some money on advertisements elsewhere and cross our fingers.

And while some of us are still doing this stuff as a hobby, or at least "jobby", EA and the other big cats are treating this as business. We are competing against Resident Evil & Need for Speed and we're doing it from our living-rooms, dorms, garages and tents. Of course this would always be an uphill struggle, but for the first time since the 80's and the hay-days of the 8-bit era, we're battling on nearly equal terms.

But if we beat ourselves up using our energy on something we cannot change I don't think we stand a chance...

 

Huh? This app was released, and about 4-5 hrs later it was featured.
Something is fishy.

 

The devs had art already made in anticipation of Apple wanting it. Or during the review process, Apple contacted them, telling them to get art ready for the release day. Reviews/updates are taking 5-10 days right now. Plenty of time to make art before the release date. TanZen has had art ready for nine months, just in case Apple calls.

 

I guess. Sad to hear that.

 

Haha tents... classic

You do raise a very good point though; at least we have access to the same distribution channels as the big publishers so that's a start. It's all about publicity, and there's a huge community built up around the iPhone who will publicise or criticise regardless of the size of the dev. So our best shot is to make our apps worthy of positive publicity, let the word spread and silently pray to the Apple roulette wheel for a feature spot when you have the time

 

I agree with you guys,
I can also tell that Apple answered clearly about this, in the last email exchange I had with support regarding a problem we had with the "Customer Also Bought" mechanism: