Didn't you feel fantastic seeing your own games front row and centre on the first page of your puzzle search? A lot of developers are going to feel good after every search!
iTunes - Subcategory = Less fortune for new developers? being a game developer for iPhone platform. I've the following reasons to fear. 1) A New developer who likes to spend less in marketing (Marketing here I mean outside AppStore, like paid reviews etc) is not going to win. 2) Games that have a particular target audience will lose. 3) Unless a game makes it to top 200, no one is aware of it. What else do you think a developer has to worry about? However the AppStore within the device still has the category, can anyone confirm if the 3.1 OS App Store looses it?
They're still on the device on 3.1. Hopefully they're staying, and hopefully the Games section of the iTunes App Store is still being worked on.
From the closed thread: It seems that you can keep your extra pages, but if you arrange your apps in iTunes you will go back to 11 (unless Voice Memos goes over the total, then you will get 12 )
Yeah, I can attest to that. I had 13 pages and it went down to 11 after I started fiddling with the iTunes way of arranging apps. But as long as I dont touch the apps tab of my device, my 3GS has been syncing 13 pages just fine. No problems.
Subcategory in iTunes 9 You know guys You can go to the iTunes panel View - Show Browser and in browser You can find all of game subcotegories But it's very hard to find it, isn't it? )
That was discovered and discussed yesterday back on page 8 of this very thread. Of course it's nice for us few people to be able to go in and see category info like this (especially out to 200 places now) but it's not going to help sales at all with the general public. Preliminary info I've seen from around the internet suggests many people are seeing 10-50% drops in sales due to the lack of obvious game subcategories... A very few are seeing an increase, quite possibly because they were somewhere in the 101-200 range that was just made visible by Apple.
I'm definitely in the latter group but I think it's hasty to make judgements on a single day of data, and on a day when most people were likely busy updating itunes and firmware to care about buying new games. As for the top 200 lists, you're only visible in the top apps or top (overall) games, and only in iTunes. My game Pinch n Pop is ranked in almost every country in its respective sub-categories now, but you still won't find it by browsing the app store - well, unless you're in Argentina or Guatemala So for me personally these changes have made little difference. The only way I or anyone else in the same situation could benefit is if the sub categories were to reappear in iTunes, and/or if the device app store continued the "25 more" up to 200.
I'm not surprised at all there would be a drop. Certainly iTunes9 is doing a great job at making me feel stupid - I'm finding a hard time finding anything. Even the old music genres are a mystery to me. I know they're still in there but I can't find how to navigate them. And, with Apps, it's worse because so many of the ones I have, I found through browsing. Spur of the moment purchases. But if browsing is made more difficult, those spur of the moment purchases are far less likely. That said, I have already bought an App due to a Genius recommendation. I suspect that will turn out to be pretty good for both devs and cumstomers.
Hmm...this is interesting. I wonder how much of an increase in sales Devs will see due to Genius recommendations? Yet another variable to consider, lol
I'm almost sure that they are simply working on a custom appStore page for games cool as the main one (the new one), sub-categories will be back. It simply would make no sense to remove them especially being games a very big portion of appStore sales and being the ipod touch sold as a gaming device. We will all see a new cooler gameStore inside the appstore soon! (at least this is what i'm hoping for ....)
the categories are still there you just have to go through power search i just searched for sports under games and it listed all the sports games i also did role playing and got a listing of all apps that were once under roleplayingi in the appstore. i guess you guys might have figured that out i think. well i guess ill just restate this in case there is anyone like me who looks at only the first and last page of long threads which is probably noone. le sigh {:[
Here is my point of view... As a gamer : - Its has now become rather difficult (if I dont use the "trick" people mentioned earlier to get the sub-categories browsing back) to just look around for a particular type of game (I like to check RPG and Puzzle category mostly). - It can be be interesting to see the top 200 in all games, but this combine many genre that maybe I have no interest in. - Ill probably just look at the top 200 of all genres or the latest release of the day and that's it. Hmmm browse thru the 661 page on iTunes... naaaahh! As a developer : - Since I dont have the same marketing power as EA/GameLoft or those large developer/publisher I had a bit more chance to be seen if I was releasing a genre/type of game in a less crowded sub-categories. - Also even if I am releasing a game in very crowded puzzle sub-categories, atleast I know people browsing this section have an interest in that type of game. - Like I mentioned in my gamer side I am sure many other gamer will think the same way, just look at the top chart like they use to do in the past. But in the past gamers could go check the sub-categories for the top, now they are stuck by default to the overall games. I am sure less popular sub-categories that has relies on their position in it, will never make it to the top 200 of the overall games and will loose a huge visibility . For example as CommanderData pointed out with his RogueTouch which is in genre (RPG) that I am sure is less popular then lets say Arcade/Action and/or puzzle. If for example I make a simulation games based on how to pilot a space shuttle it will be very hard to be seen in the overall games. In the simulation category it could have become popular as gamers going there are simulator addict (the kind of people with the full gear of control for an airplane hook up to their PC). The only positive thing in this whole iTunes update mess is the Genius part that will give recommendation base on what you got. So some of us could get our games recommended and be discovered this way. Very very very disappointed... ooooh and also dont talk to me about the 8g iPodt touch not updated (pfff how come no OpenGL 2.0? Just the 32gb and 64gb get some love??? ). Hoping Apple will make an iTune 9.1 update ASAP to bring back sub-categories. Funny they were laughing at retail store to buy games as a big shelf full of games without any order whatsoever...
The Games subcategory, and other subcategories, are on the iTunes store. When you hover over the app store link at the top of the iTunes page, you'll see an arrow. Click on the arrow, and you'll see the subcategories. Problem is not many people are noticing it. They need to have a section that lists the subcategories on the actual main page, not just through the arrow. Still can't find the subcategories that are under the main games category though
well i just put puzzle in the search box in the top right hand corner then it showed me matches from the entire itunes store in their respective categories i chose the look at the matches under the apps category then it showed me matches from the entire appstore. then i refined my search for puzzles to games and finally i got a listing of all the puzzle games in the appstore and pinch and pop was on the first page. an easier way to do this is to choose search under store in the window toolbar menu. it takes you directly to power search. i did the same for role playing, action, and sports categories and got several pages of relevant results. the few problems i see with this is that it doesnt let you choose how the results are displayed and its a little more work than it used to be. are people having problems because the process seems more involved now or that the subcategories are just not displayed or both? kinda confused heh
Does the "new" AppStore breaks everything? Hello, I noticed some issues with the new AppStore and wondered, what the devs think about that and whether they see an impact on sales: - Main Categories no longer visible on the front page of the AppStore. You can only reach them using the little arrow in the black main menu. - Sub Categories are gone from the pages. So you only have a games page, no more racing page. - Therefore, the charts for sub categories are also gone. Left are the charts for the main categories, which means, now we only have one single chart for "games". - Pressing Command-B still opens the browser and gives you the sub-categories in list view without charts, but no one know this shortcut. So, from my perspective, so AppStore is now officially broken by design, while before the relaunch it was broken by incompetence. Bye, Oliver
has anyone else mentioned crashing? almost nothing ever crashes on my mac, and iTunes has "quit unepectedly" 3 times in 20 minutes
Oh common, you must have done something wrong yourself. it's apple ! "it just works" * *real results might not reflect what can be seen in commercials also "we give our users the freedom to look for games in any way they want * *as long as it's through the keywords, we know better what they might need" sorry, just had to let some of my frustration at their lunacy go
Hehe. Works for me, as long as you're not bashing Lunarcy, which is a cool (if difficult) little game. In my case they'd probably blame Windows for making their program crash anyway.
