I have a feeling in my gut that the only reason that all these great games keep dropping in price is because the new 3.0 software allows the developers to charge us for in game purchases! It makes perfect sense that you drop the price of a game to $0.99 in order to get a ton of people to buy your unfinished game and once you have them invested you bait and switch people into buying more levels... It seems like the days of buying an application and getting more levels for free is over, I'll have to see how it plays out but it makes me worried to buy any application when I know that the developer isnt going to work on it at all unless you pay them more than you bought it for. Some games I bought for $0.99 I wouldnt have paid any more for but I relied on updates to fulfill the expectation created by the developer (an example being Sparta). I wouldnt have bought Sparta if I didnt know that free future updates are coming out to make it better, but if the developer said that "future updates will cost $2 each level" I wouldnt have bought it at all. Looks like I'll be relying on the opinions of BigAlbie, Hodapp, and Arn even more heavily in the future since I dont like where the appstore is headed.
just make sure you buy games that are already complete. If a game can keep me latched on long enough in this app store to where I want the extra level packs or dlc I figure I'll be more than happy to continue to support. But if they release a half azzed game, and try to sell me double the levels and more control options I'm gonna look right over it, if they screw you once, they'll do it again
Personally I think every game in the appstore will eventually have in game purchasing. Why would developers ignore such a cash cow where instead of having to develop entirely new games you could just come out with some more levels and get another round of money? Lets golf : come out with some new fairways Asphalt 4: come out with some new racetracks Peggle: come out with new levels These are just examples and I dont mind if they come out with something revolutionary but I think thats a big complain people have with the iPhone when it came out... coming out with something unfinished just so that later on you could come out with an "update" which should have been there from the beginning and charge the customer again.
Or maybe they're dropping their price to get more sales. Plus the new iPhone came out, so they want to get the attention of the new app store consumers. I'm with you though, I am a bit worried with these low prices but I know there are those devs out there that I can trust
Asphalt has been in the appstore since the first months. It was one of the first racers. I think the only reason they dropped the price was because of the upcoming Asphalt 5 release that will have many 3.0 functions. Let's Golf is try to compete with Tiger. EA dropped the price of NFS when Real Racing started beating it in the top 50. That is just a result of competition. Peggle was just a 3 day (?) promotion to get a boost in sales. I really think you are overreacting. We still haven't seen any signs of abuse yet. The DLC that I bought for Flick Fishing was a worthy addition to a great game. It is well worth it to support the developer now that the game has been out for a long, and is still being updated for no cost. I think we have enough threads about this as it is. Please no one else make another.
You're all wrong. The REAL reason is there's a conspiracy among the big name developers to slowly phase out all the indie devs into the oblivion by making their super polished games the same price as the homegrown ones, thus forcing the smaller developers to be unable to compete. Once there's only big name developers making games, then they can all jack up their prices to 30 dollars for a fart app, and there'll be nothing we can do about it.
Problem is that in-game purchases are probably making more sense for expensive apps like sims3 since people tend to delete 0.99 apps pretty fast, and will never see the new stuff being available.
Yeah but after paying $9.99, how much more will you be willing to pay? As opposed to paying $0.99? If you ask me, I'd be more happy to buy DLC for a $0.99 game.
I laugh on this, but as an indie developer I see that the big names are kicking us the butt with this low prices.
BTW, I'm not planning in-game purchases in my incoming GeoRain game, and price will be set 0.99$ (I wouldn't wanted to do this, but big guys forced me) for the first days and later increase the price. So my game will have free updates and I will reward early adopters.
*facepalm* That theory makes sense with monopolies that are necessary. Gas, medicine, electricity, and cars to name a few. But if an iFart app is thirty dollars, you're on your own if you need an iFart app. Wow.
Since my game, Sparta, was mentioned in this thread, I thought I would chime in as a developer. Sparta, for example, will become a fully functional game as we originally promised. Our first free update has already been submitted a few weeks back and we are waiting upon Apple for approval. Sparta will not feature any in-game purchases until everything we promised has been completed, and possibly not even then. The reason that developers would be hesitant is because they would not want the backlash that we are seeing now for in game app purchase and DLC. In time it may be useful for when the game is enjoyable and people want more value out of it. This way both the player and developer can win if the developer can finance the development and the player gets more from their game after a purchase.
Why not? Makes perfect sense to me. Let's Golf! may have new packs which unlock new maps as well as new characters. Asphalt 4 may have new packs which unlock new cars and new maps.
It seems like anyone who wants to spend money on Asphalt 4 DLC would just buy Real Racing. And Peggle is Peggle! It's a port and I think that Popcap made enough money and is moving on to the next game. Let's Golf! is the most likely to have DLC out of the four mentioned but it's still very unlikely.
Alot of people keep forgetting that Popcap said "Peggle was built for 3.0, so you can expect DLC." And yeah, those Gameloft games will probably have DLC.
I only used Sparta as a example because I know you are coming out with the free updates for sure. (The exact opposite of what I am worried about) You even said that Sparta's price is low to reward to people who support you early on and will get the free updates which I appreciate. I just wanted to use it as an example of other developers in the future saying that the game will have more updates to come and not telling us we will be charged for them. Sorry if anyone got the wrong idea about Sparta, its a great game and only was using it as an example.
Think of it this way, most devs are selling full-fleshed out game for 99c or a buck or two more. They're not even breaking even. 6 months of work down the drain. Extra levels and features may not save them, but at least help them. The reason titles for other platforms cost so much is because they're full. You're not getting the biggest of game on the iPhone, but the devs aren't charging the largest of prices.
The real reason is cause the games are quite expensive and there are a lot more consumers now that there is the iPhone 3GS and 3.0... plus, nobody will buy them before and when the newcomers come in, they will flock to the high quality stuff and names that they know and trust. Asphalt 4 sucks anyway and its overpriced and nobody is buying it so why not lower the price so a bunch of people will buy it?
