Aint that the truth. They indeed had the best hype going with free advertising from the Apple gods themselves. But I noticed SimCity slowing dropping out from the Top 100s as well. I think its because both games are a bit niche and pricey. If iFart and iBeer are still selling at top spots, then the iPhone demographic is obviously not the type to sit down, play, and appreciate the games like SimCity and Rolando. What I see in the future are more games for that type of market, and less games like Edge, Rolando, SimCity, etc. And if they do make these latter types, they won't be cheap.
The problem is, that most apps on the AppStore are 1. Too cheap for what they offer 2. Free 3. Too cheap or free and sucking like hell Sim City and Rolando are priced well. Both are great games with great contents and much fun inside. I even think, that they should cost more. But unless the other devs start charging reasonable prices for their work and unless Apple really starts separating the low budget games from the higher priced ones, this won't change. I had the idea of creating several groups of apps like free, low-budget, mid-buget and premium. This would solve the mess with the top lists and make clear, that for more money you get a premium game. The focus would change from the price to the quality of the games.
good idea but who would be responsible for deciding if a game is of premium caliber? we could see some crap games in there.
Maybe it shouldn't be based on quality but on price (was that your suggestion as well, Oliver?). Then, quality games can get the $9,99 pricetag, but they will be among SimCity and Rolando etc.. So in order to be at the top with a $9,99 game, you don't have to compete with the $0,99 games, but you do have to compete with the other games of your pricerange. So if your game is $9,99 and too pricey for its quality, it'll be low in the list. But a good $9,99 game would get the recognotion it deserved, even though the #1 $9,99 game might have less sales than the #10 $0,99 game.
Yes, it was meant to be based on the price. So if a dev decides to give it a price tag of 9,99, it is considered as a premium game and displayed in this category automatically. Some devs might produce crap and give it the premium price tag, but that's how the DS market works: Great and garbage games cost the same - reviews and ratings do the rest of the work. This system would just keep the different pricing schemes separate from each other. Premium games would be visible again and a dev who creates a premium game can therefore charge more for his work (i.e., finally something reasonable).
works for me. the only problem is that way too many developers think they're games are worth more than they are!!
It wouldn't work this easily though. If a developer would discount the game, he could get more sales (because this often happens with sales, people are waiting for the price to drop and then get it) and then restore the price. He'd still have a certain number of sales from the discount, and could be instant #1 in his pricerange. The alternative would be to reset a game's sale count when a price drop occurs, so that when a developer discounts his game and then set it back to the old price he'll have to work his way up in the rankings again. But then developers would never discount their games again since it would take them off the ranking lists.
Whoever said Rolando was easy or short, is mistaken in my opinion. This game has frustrated me so much, because of how difficult it is in some areas. I'm on "The Rescue Party" level in "Fire Canyon". I've tried it at least eight times, and I still lose a Rolando before finishing the level. It can be very tricky in some spots. It has major replay value. I'm sure others may have breezed right through it, but not me.
For some reason, I didn't really like Rolando. I just... I dunno, you just roll little balls into a door. I don't get it.
Yes, I also think Rolando has decent replay value. It might be easy just to simply 'beat' the game, but going back to collect all the diamonds and completing each levels within the Time Trial limit is definitely challenging and worthy of playing the game over additional times. Not to mention, it's cool just to take out your device and let those silly dudes that make funny sounds roll around a bit.
it's time for them to lower it it's slippering down the top paid apps/games... (sparta was also, but now i guess the sales went up again!)
How is this relevant to this topic? -- I don't think it should drop in price, if there's one game I'd like to stay at it's current price point then it's this, SOME premium games need to try and keep the price level above $0,99
