Nope. It's 100% up to Apple's discretion. Devs don't even get alerted that they're being featured - they just might get a nice surprise one morning when they check iTunes. Of course, Apple is much more likely to feature companies they already have a relationship with. I don't know if EA talks to Apple to set that up, or Apple just realizes that an EA game is likely to sell and therefore markets it. I'm sure that EA has an *expectation* that their games will get featured. But no, it is not paid advertising whatsoever.
Yeah, Apple and Pangea obviously have a good relationship, and have had one for a very very long time
Do you want us to buy your game? If so, stop crying and tell us about it. Wasn't it your choice to introduce it for free? If you wanted to make a buck off it, why didn't you charge a buck?
I can't help but notice that he hasn't posted anything since the first post... Either he is busy or too scared to show us his game...
I was just gonna say that...I think mr. postman is a rather ellaborate troll. He/She just posted some random bullsh@t to get people mad and post even more random bullsh@t. Please people: don't feed trolls...
So how come more big companies aren't porting their existing games? That's gotta be a lot easier/cheaper. Sega & others could dust off about a billion old gems and start making $ off properties that are just sitting and not earning anything. It doesn't seem to be too hard for Pangea and a few others. They're doing it quick, and for cheap selling prices, and those are actually 3D games. How hard could it be to port the Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog? It would look better than any of the other 2D scrollers and that game is ancient. Instead I'm sure Sega is hard at work developing some totally new sonic title for the iPhone. I'd love to play that game. It just seems like there some easy money in ports that's being ignored.
You had better believe that EA talks to Apple! They probably have a sales guy or two specifically tasked with bothering the App Store people.
I think that Square Enix WILL bring Final Fantasy I/II to the iPhone, and they WILL charge $20-$30 for it. Hundreds of thousands of people will pay for it, especially in Japan.
simple I simply think that if your app is worth some bucks, you'll get some bucks. There are many develpers who made some money with 0.99$ apps. If you didn't, I just think your app is not worth 0.99$, sorry. Bum.
To be blunt, if people thought it was worth their money then they would buy it. If they thought it wasn't worth the price you wanted then either they don't think they should pay for something they used to be able to get for free, or they don't think it's worth paying for at all. I can somewhat see your point but I stand by what I mentioned above.
Thanks to this site, I have bought many games with nothing to go on but the screenshots. If I didn't buy your game, it's for one of three reasons: 1) I didn't know about it 2) I read about it, but the review made me lose interest 3) I don't like the genre (couldn't be less inclined to play a "match 3" game ever again. If you made the world's best "match 3" game, I still wouldn't buy it.)
Assuming those numbers were correct (although I am sure it is just much speculation)... Let's think about the fact that there are over 10 million iPhones that have been sold thus far... I know that not all markets may receive such app, but if it's a polished app that is actually worth 10 bucks (I stress the word WORTH as I have seen too many apps not worth half that price in the store), they could easily make their money back.... For the amount of iPhones in circulation today that's only about 5-6 percent of the users out there... I could be wrong, but being that the app store is selling over a million dollars worth of apps a day (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/11/iphone-apps-selling-at-1_n_118152.html) I think that it is definitely feasible and plausible for a company to make bank... Just my 2 cents...
BTW: pricing is in AUD.... Apple need to drop the $250 before paying cutoff. There needs to be a pettition! Why? Because originally I (and others) expected a few 99c toys, but mostly games would be in the $5-$20 region, and idiots like EA might charge $39.95 for a big full featured game. Considering DS games at $59-$69 or more here, I was expecting the vast majority of games to be much cheaper, but still. As games are now AT MOST $12.99 AUD (9.99USD) and a couple at $5.99 but mostly 99c or 'free for a day' it takes far longer to get $250 to the developers. So it should be lowered, IMO. I am not a dev btw I check the price drops and appstore daily, and get anything 'free for a limited time' that looks remotely interesting, knowing it will improve with future updates and i won't have to pay for it. Is everyone doing this? If so then no wonder things aren't selling after a free period. I've spend countless amounts on the AppStore, because I can't wait for a good game to price drop. The price drops are stupid, much as I like spending less. Fieldrunners I bought the day it came out because it looked brilliant, despite the lack of sound and it not being finished yet. I don't regret it at all. I love Lux Touch, which is free, but it annoys me that the full version isn't done yet. I bought the $9.99 SNATCH as it's more capable than any other mouse/keyboard trackpad apps, as it lets you create your own customisable button screens with assignable macros, how handy! I didn't by the cheaper air mouse because it doesn't do as much. I will buy NFS, Monopoly, and Sim City, because they should all have decent replay value.
#what is your game and... first what is your game, seriously we might be able to help you if you told us. The minimum price for an app should be free because I would never pay for papi jump, i would never pay for that, but papijump+ brought more to the table and was worth 60p or $1. I have payed for lots of games knowing fully well that within a week they would be cheaper, because the dev deserves their money sometimes, but obviously people don't think of your game as one that is worth a dollar
The way I'm seeing it as I'm inching closer to actually having a programmer to partner up with is that my more ambitious projects will have to wait. I'm actually working on ideas and designs for an RPG that would be kind of like a roguelike but not that much like them after all (informative, I know. ^_^) but I'm thinking of first of all making a smaller version incorporating a lot of the same features that I'm going to bring into what would effectively be the sequel but on a smaller scale. That first game would be cheap 1-2 dollars and would (hopefully) be interesting enough that people start to take notice of the name so that by the time we are able to finish a much more advanced sequel, the first game will have wetted peoples appetites. That's my business plan for that particular game, and one that I hope works.
The numbers I posted for game development are a rough estimate, but the ballpark is correct. It's a big sliding scale of course, with clever outsourcing perhaps helping in keeping the core team smaller and therefore fixed costs lower. However, expecting the total number of devices out there to be the target market would be a serious mistake. Despite being a very capable platform for gaming, iPhone and iPod touch are not dedicated gaming devices. So at least the following factors weigh in: - A portion of the users will not purchase applications at all, simply because they are either unaware of the App Store, or simply not interested - Some users may be underage and do not have credit cards - Some users may simply be uninterested in gaming (beyond the occasional solitaire etc.) There are no official numbers for the above, and it would be extremely difficult to even make an educated guess. One reference which may be valid for comparison is that roughly 50-70% of Xbox 360's are connected to Xbox Live (as I recall) and of them, perhaps 30% actually buy games from Live Arcade. Similar figures apply to PS3 as well. For sake of argument, let's pick a number and say that there are 6 million potential customers who would be interested in games and both willing and able to purchase them. Now let's talk about segmentation: The game industry loves to talk about casual and core gamers, based on their gaming habits. Casual gamers purchase games less often and look for games to provide entertainment more than challenge. The usually quoted figure is that core gamers are 20% of the total market. The figure may be less for iPhone due to it being new to the market and because it is not a dedicated gaming platform. But moving forward, since we are talking about an RPG, it's definitely a game that appeals to the core gamer. Therefore within the context of this example, the number of potential buyers is 1.2 million (20% of 6M). But wait... not all core gamers like the same stuff. Core gamers are actually quite genre-biased, and tend to keep to their own turf. Therefore the total core gamer market is in fact divided into smaller segments per genre, with about 10-20% slices for the big genres (racing, sports, action, FPS...) and 1-5% slices for the rest. Asian RPGs are unfortunately not a major share of the core market despite the success of some specific series. So, even if we inflate the number to 10% due to higher demand of quality content on the iPhone, our expected number of customers is 120 000 (10% of core gamers). These are the kind of calculations done by any publisher with basic business sense, and they determine if a project gets started or not. Their numbers must be more accurate than mine, and they will factor in variables that I haven't listed (region-specific genre preferences, release month etc.), but the principle remains. I admit that 120 000 potential customers seems low, and my gut feeling is that a good RPG would sell more than that. But would I trust my gut instead of the spreadsheet when it's time to greenlight a $5M development project? With Apple's 30% royalty share, the game would have to be priced at $65 to even meet the production cost if the spreadsheet is correct. Remember that even on any game console, a blockbuster hit is a game that sells to about 20% of the entire device base. Halo goes a bit higher than that, since the profile of the customers is a good match for the genre. In conclusion, my example game budget is silly, and should be adjusted to ~$500k for the business case to make any kind of sense. Can you make "a new, good RPG" with that budget? I highly doubt it. But you could make many other kick-ass games for sure. Something to read: http://www.rampantgames.com/blog/2007/09/indie-rpgs-just-not-worth-it.html
