Firstly, I would point out that if one sells 100,000 copies of a game at $9.99, that person would have generated the same amount of revenue as selling 1 million copies at $0.99. And, for the larger developers, it's actually easier to sell 100,000 at $9.99 than 1 million at $0.99. Games that sell for $0.99 initially have a very short life cycle. Their run on the charts is quite short. Games that initially sell at $9.99, however, have a much longer life cycle. Why? Because once the returns on $9.99 start to run out, the price can always be cut in increments. Can't do that if you initially launch at $0.99. Not to mention the little secret many people overlook: The vast majority of games available in the App Store are priced at $0.99. Most fail to sell very many copies at all. Now, that doesn't mean that $9.99 is a paradise either, but it can prove the better option for some dev/publishers. At $9.99, the inherent advantage is with the larger dev/publishers. EA, Sega, Vivendi, Gameloft, etc. have all shown that they can, in fact, make an impact at the $9.99 price point. Would it be enough to be #1 in the paid game category? Maybe not. Forget about #1 paid app overall all category (an all encompassing category, that, btw, should not be the primary concern of game developers as they are not in direct competition with entertainment or productivity apps no more than Epic Games is in competition with Adobe in the PC market). That said, the initial $9.99 price point carries enough of an audience for the larger dev/publishers that it would be silly for them to completely abandon that price point for their larger, more cost intensive games. For indie devs, of course, $9.99 puts them at a disadvantage. They simply cannot compete in "wow" factor with the bigs. In terms of overall dev costs, Carmack has stated that one could make a $10 million game on iTouch/Phone. But what he didn't address is this: Should one even do such a thing? We've seen what has happened on PSP, a dedicated game platform mind you, with developers becoming risk averse to developing games on such a platform until recently, with JP companies seeing some profit in Japan, and even then by lowering costs overall on their developments (Capcom's Monster Hunter series, which has seen a few offerings on PSP, is big budget, sure...but the game engine has been used and reused time and time again). And even then Sony is making moves toward smaller budget games to get ready for the launch of the PSPgo. Why? Because the portable game market has always erred toward smaller investment due to the low cost, lower need to sell a lot to make profit paradigm. Sony made a potentially bad business move in attempting to, as they put it, "take handheld gaming out of the ghetto". Huge, console style budgets simply don't make much business sense in the portable gaming market. Nintendo has followed that paradigm pretty extensively. Even on the high end, DS games don't cost in the multiple of millions to develop. They're smaller budget developments that ensure even moderately okay sales will ensure returns on investment. And even still Nintendo is moving toward smaller, less cost intensive offerings with DSiWare. In the mobile platform market (in which Apple's iTouch/Phone platform directly competes), Android, nGage, and possibly the upcoming ZuneHD will also most likely err more towards lower budget gaming. So huge budget games for portable game systems and mobile platforms alike falling by the wayside? IMHO they shouldn't be made. Big budget games ($1 million or so in dev costs)...sure. $1 million dev cost games might be able to be sustained provided backing from a larger company with more extensive marketing muscle. But, of course, that means that indie devs/publishers can't really compete in that higher end market. But $9.99 is sustainable. It's not going away unless the dev/publishers have fallen into the trap of looking at number of sales instead of that which they should look at - revenue generation. It would seem the neo-marketing tactics (which aren't really new at all) of the Chris Anderson's of the world are being followed in an erroneous fashion. Just because the power of free is there (or the power of cheap in this case) doesn't mean that it is always the right tactic to take. The race to the bottom upon initial release is the issue, as is more drastic price cuts than necessary (Gameloft really could've tried $7.99 before going to $5.99, and could've tried $2.99 or $1.99 before going down to $0.99 with their older games like HoS), and it all centers around, IMHO, the erroneous and downright silly notion that more "eyes" is more important than greater revenue generation and one with longer sustainability at that. The indie devs fell into this trap. One would hope that the larger devs, with actual marketing and accounting departments, understand that they need not do the same.
I'm also worried about ea. For example madden is meant to be out in less than a month and yet there is still no info on it.
God. I know what you mean. I constantly see complaints about controls and how the games are a "Rippoff for the OVERPRICED $5 price tag." Really. These people are wanting these big massively complex games for the iPod Touch, but do they contribute to the store in that way? Maybe, but a lot of them steal it for free on Installous. The appstore is just full of anal, selfish punks, who seem completely unaware that someone spent hours, days, weeks, and even months of his time, just to make games on the iPhone. I've seen stupid reviews insulting control schemes, yet the person has no preference or suggestion of what the controls should be like. I've seen many people write complaints like "I had a lot of fun playing it, but now that I beat it, there's nothing to do, so it's a waste of money." I've actually seen that same complaint follow anger or even cursing. I got mad when I saw a review for Star Defense saying "It's fun, but it feels like a demo. Only seven levels? There should be a LOT more content for this game if it is to be priced at $5.99." That made me mad, of course. Does that guy have any idea what the devs went through to make breathtaking 3D planets for a TD game?? They deserve pay for their hard work. I've bought many games from GameLoft. I also bought FAST, Katamari, Super Monkey Ball, the platform adventures from PangeaSoft, Rolando and quite a few others. I have loved and enjoyed each of them, and I like to replay the ones I have beaten as well. I bought them all fair and got none illegally. I believe that customers demanding that great games should be free pr very low priced is encouraging slavery. I hope that Apple doesn't go through with the lower price cap. If they do, then I'll have to say goodbye to my hopes for a Kingdom Hearts or Star Wars Battle Front ever making it to the appstore.
I beg to differ. The $0.99 market in the App Store is among the more competitive and riskiest. Why? Flood of product. The $9.99 market, for a company like EA, actually carries less overall risk. EA knows it can sell pretty well at that price point. It knows it can then lower price in increments over time once the consumers willing to pay for the individual game at the higher price point start to run dry. It knows that it can have sustained revenue generation over a longer period of time with such games. It knows it has name recognition in terms of both the licenses it uses and itself as a company, and the marketing power, to pull of selling games at such a higher end price point. And who do they compete with, really, in that higher end market? Gameloft, Sega, Konami, etc. Other bigs...of which there are but a few. With $0.99, however...not so many "known knowns" and even what we (and EA) know about the $0.99 market is not all s***s and giggles. There's increased competition, we know that. Where EA competes with only a scant few at the high end, they compete with thousands on the lowest end of the price spectrum. There's less sustainability over time (life cycles of the products are very short). There's less maneuverability with price points. Can't lower price to meet demand for a lower price point to raise sales, can't really raise price as that means falling off of the charts. There's a potential for less revenue overall. But maybe the sales numbers (not revenue figures) for those $0.99 indie apps has blinded EA? Or maybe they're attempting to rid the App Store of those developers by themselves competing in that spectrum. Of course, I think there were more reasons that just seeing the number of sales for $0.99 games that fed into EA's decision. I think in part they realized that the individual developers in their employ could, at moments notice, make a game for the App Store themselves and possibly attempt to go into business for themselves. If successful, they leave EA. If not successful, they possibly go into debt, which effects their work for EA. Either way, their focus wouldn't really be with EA. So EA finds a way around this potential problem: offer to handle the budget and marketing for those devs' indie developments instead in order to retain said developers in the EA fold. It's similar to what Sega has done in the past with their develop independence program (which led to Yuji Naka leaving Sonic Team and founding Prope...but Prope, of course, is a Sega 2nd party dev, and so Naka is still partially in the Sega fold). By doing this, a side benefit is that EA owns the concepts, makes money, and maybe has the potential to get rid of some of those pesky indie developers who raced to the bottom because that's what they felt they needed to do in order to compete.
I am just glad more and more people are finally starting to realize this. Those of us who brought up "iPhone gamers are really demanding" kind of statements got rediculed by wanna-be internet lawyers and business market executives saying "You are wrong. We as the consumer make the prices, not devs. .99 cents is all (Insert random good looking game beyond worth .99 cents) this game is worth". F*CK YOU. I don't care what you say, dev's have the say in prices and it's because of your bitching that many indie devs, and more recently, major devs feel the need to drastically lower prices just to get attention/sales. It's in that respect that I lost all hope for the appstore. I knew something like this was going to happen, just didn't know when or what was to come of it. I just hope it repairs itself because unfortunately apple may not be seeing much income from me, and what will be the point of buying later generations of iDevices if the applications we have to work with do just fine on older gen iDevices?
Ugh...I hate snobs like those who never consider how much work a dev's gone through to create something so polished. Same goes for those who complain about a $1-2 price and call for it to be free
I call them polished games that last 3 hours at the most. Real Racing is probably the only one that qualifies as full-fledged. Tiger Woods comes close, but not quite. Doom Resurrection is too short, and Zenonia's a cell phone port for crying out loud. It didn't even have diagonal movement 'til recently. You haven't even played it yet. None of Gameloft's titles last very long. Resident Evil 4 isn't out either, and from what I heard, it lasted, what, 4 hours? Dexter also isn't out yet. Apart from Zenonia, which IMO is extremely over-rated, what game in the AppStore comes even close to the addictiveness of Super Mario. To hell with graphics, power, speed, options, what game has drawn you in from start to finish and from start to finish again? One that you'll tell your kids one day, "back in the day of the iPod Touch 2G, I played game so-and-so, and when they release it on the Apple AppStore emulator, I'm getting it in a heartbeat,"?
To be fair, it is only 2:00 in the afternoon, they either are still sleeping or haven't gotten home from school yet.
Well, what other kind of person has limitless time to complain about 99 cent purchases? The scenario that creates the situation where someone's money is infinitely valuable to them yet their time is completely worthless is when there isn't anything for them to do other than wait for this week's allowance before they can buy more games.
The most these games cost is TEN DOLLARS. Ten. Not 50. Not 40. Not 30. Not even 20. Even if you assume they only last 3 hours (and you're WAY off here...the only one of those you can finish in 3 hours is DR) then you are still getting tremendous value for your money. It's also assuming that you only play the game through once. These games (with the exception of Zenonia, which I also think is overrated, I put it here as an example of a full game) are all ones I will play through more than once. I have put much more than 3 hours into all of these games. I will put more hours in. I have owned games that I paid 50 dollars for that I realized after 20 minutes playing that I needed to sell back to Game Stop because they sucked royally. So even accounting for credit on my return, I'm down approx. 35 dollars on a piece of garbage "full" game. I'm starting to feel that there really should be some distinction in the app store between "casual" games that you can pick up and play for a few minutes in line that run around 1-5 dollars, and "premium" games that run around 5-20 dollars. We need to let developers know that there are gamers out there that are excited about this platform and what can be done with it. Then when people whine and moan about paying 10 dollars, we can direct them to the kiddie pool where they can splash in the shallow end of fart apps, emoji apps, and idiot tests.
So far, few games have done anything like this to me. However, I did find Castle of Magic to be a profoundly fun and mario-like addicting. I am not the BIGGEST fan, but the Rolando experiences are one of a kind as well, and I am sure many people will want them in the same respect you mentioned. Knights Onrush will always have my heart as well. I must ask though, and keep in mind I am asking with only good intentions.... but Kamazar, do you like iPhone gaming at all? What games do you find remotely interesting, if any. Win.
It's not so much that I don't like iPhone gaming, even though I really do come off that way. It's that I really can't find anything that hits the spot gaming wise. I can't find that platformer that I'm always coming back to, or that fighting game where there's just one more mega boss that I just have to beat. The games I really do love are found every two months or so. I can find an endless supply of bite-sized games that I love, but feel are lacking depth. Games that I honestly like and will keep on my iPod until they're no longer compatible with the software? Strongholds TTR2 Real Racing Ball Fill Quick Turn Blimp Edge Circuit Strike.one Light Wars Fast Flight Control (and a couple spin-offs) Eliss Galcon Galaxy on Fire Galactic Gunner Glyder iSR iShoot Sway Wooden Labyrinth 3D Space Ninja Peggle Zentomino Up There 3D Tunnel Vision Wolfenstein 3D Tiki Towers Snail Mail Slotz Racer Need for Speed Honestly not that many considering the sheer size of the AppStore, but I'm waiting patiently for the first game I'll log over 5 hours on.
I get where you are coming from. Like I said, I was just more or less asking if there was anything that you liked, as like you said, doesn't come off sounding like it lol. While I will say that there arnt a whole great deal of many that keep me coming back for more, I am easily entertained, thusly I am amused by quite a few games I have on my iPod. heh
Here is a link from their 3rd quarter 2009 quarterly conference call. http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/21/notes_of_interest_from_apples_q309_quarterly_conference_call.html Not sure what those idea are, and they may be shit, or may be a better pricing structure. The problem is the "what's hot" bullshit of the Appstore. There is big money in being featured there, and it usually takes a .99 price point to get there. Maybe a restructured tier system, or instead of highest sales, make it total revenue based, so the pricier games who have sold well get noticed as well. Who knows, I love cheap ass games, but I love good games more. So I will gladly pay the premium if the game deserves it. Also they need to kill installous and that bullshit. It is a big drain on the Appstore, big deterrent to big time devs.
WAT Lol, on a serious note I agree about the restructuring of the way the searching is handled. If they just tiered the price points of the games in a fashion where people can search for "Premium" titles, or if they want to search for .99 cent games. Like you said, I love cheap ass games, and who doesn't like sales. But I love games that will hold my attention and want to play for more than 30 minutes at a time (given I have the time). These are games that you generally have to pay more for, and I am fine with that.
Well, I really want more higher priced games, and more polished dollar games, but it's not like we are being spoiled right now with some of the dollar games out their. :\ But then again, games like Real Racing, I can't afford right now, even though I really want it :\
