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At the time I thought they would just turn down the money/minute dial to almost zero once they had brought enough people to their platform that it wasn't worth it anymore. I didn't realise they would shut it down completely.

I would be interested in seeing data about how successful that program was at attracting actual consumers to the platform rather than just developers . . . .

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Yup, I'm not sure it was amazingly popular with either. The Amazon appstore has a bit of an uphill battle in the regard in general AFAIK.

In regard to your other points I also happened across this today: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/spotify...

Interesting how quickly these subscription services are losing money and how low the rate of return to the artist is.

I only have one game on there, and can't give specifics, but it earned more on underground than either google or apple's stores (but not both combined). I was looking forward to the long tail of updating it and gaining users, but I guess that's the risk with walled gardens.

I think in comparison to F2P type mechanics a subscription service that pays developers per minute of play is great. It's the same focus on retention without the requirement to try to have the player spend on a regular basis.

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