Microsoft explains Windows 8 Store: Free 7-Day Trial, lower pay-cuts and more | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft explains Windows 8 Store: Free 7-Day Trial, lower pay-cuts and more

the4cast.com

33 pointsimkarthikk20 comments

I think the generous free trial could allow them to raise the floor even higher than $1.49.

Part of the reason I won't buy expensive apps on iPhone is because there's no recourse if they're terrible. Google's 15 minute trial period is a start, but for some games that's not long enough to download the content they need to run.

It will also motivate developers to create apps with more than 7 days worth of value. How many people will actually keep a fart app or a game with 2 levels for more than 7 days?

I think this will be an interesting experiment and look forward to seeing what effect is has on the quality and quantity of available applications.

This will, however, lower the number of 1 off apps that people need. Sometimes, I need an app to do something that I do once a year. I have no intention of paying $5 for this app and chances are, I'll download it and return it clean within that 7 day period. So if your app is very situational, the MS app store might do more harm than good.

Yeah, I can see that happening. Looking through my purchase history on my Mac and iPad - there are a handful of apps that I've purchased for one specific use, or are only useful for a limited time (ie, a fantasy football draft application). In all cases, I feel like I got my $1 worth, but if the feeling is "eh, I'm not going to use this anymore", there isn't any incentive to go through the process of paying for it.

Depending on how this is implemented and whether or not it is optional, it could be problematic for some useful apps.

The trial period appears to be at the developer's option.

Presumably apps like "Tax Me! 2012" and "Fantasy Football Draft Dominator" will know better than to offer a free trial.

That's interesting! So not ALL the apps would have trails! :(

These kind of apps tend to be free though. There might be paid version available but for most a cheaper and usable version is either already there or would soon replace the paid version for most users.

It wasn't clear on the initial page, but I found a better description of the various options [1] and time/feature limited apps are just an option - you can opt to collect the money upfront.

1. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh69408...

Relevant post on MSDN: https://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/07/20/mak...

The $1.49 may not be very far from $0.99 in real terms, but I feel it significantly increases resistance. I'd be much more willing to spend $0.99 for an app I want to check out than $1.49. Wonder what the rationale behind that figure is.

It might be that they feel Windows is a "real OS" for "real computers", not for phones. Similarly to how iPad versions of apps are sometimes more expensive than their iPhone/iPod touch counterparts, if separate.

For me, the resistance between $1 and $1.49 is about equal. That is, pretty much zero resistance. Anything below about $2 i think i would still click 'purchase' on a whim without really investigating it. Only at about $3 is would i pause and consider if i really needed it.

(fwiw i'm far from rich, and I own an Android + iPhone and have purchased less than 30 apps lifetime... so I guess whimsy doesn't strike me often, even at 99c! Just adding another data-point.)

I think there is a very real difference between 0.something and 1.something. $1.49 is an "awkward" price, that is not as obviously "as cheap as we can make it".

In the iOS ecosystem there is something of a race to the bottom in pricing, where everyone is competing to have the most widely used $.99 app. I can see how Microsoft considers this to devalue the app ecosystem: a system where apps compete on both price and value is more healthy than a system where 50% of the paid apps are at $.99 and everyone competes on visibility.

$1.49 might be a play to attract developers whose revenue is tied to the lowest app store price point.

One serious problem with the Windows 8 Store. It will only be for Metro Style apps, which require the complete stack to be on the the "Metro" .net stack.

I have an app that I was looking to port to Windows 8. It's written in .NET, and uses good architecture so that (I thought) all I would need to do is hook-up the UI. Nope. I can't just reference the core dll and be off. That dll has to be a "Metro class library." Now, I apparently have to maintain two versions of my core library in addition to the UI layers. This is a problem.

That's untrue, desktop apps can (and already have) been listed in the Windows Store. They're essentially links out to your website where you'd need to handle your own payment and downloads, but you'd have a presence and show up in search results etc. Search for Age of Empires Online in the store for an example of a Desktop app listing.

I've searched for a way that I can make this happen, but I'm not seeing it anywhere. Is it only Microsoft software that takes advantage of this? I suppose that getting into the search results is very useful.

EDIT: found a link

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/06/08/list...

1.49 is there to ensure no crappy apps. after all in case of MS trials are possible meaning you no longer need to buy crappy apps just because the description sounds good.

I don't have any particular problems with the 1.49 price point (and I kind of wish the iOS app store hadn't set a standard where a $2 or $3 app is considered "expensive"), but how does an extra $.50 prevent crappy apps?

It doesn't prevent them of course, but the higher price floor and the lower cut incentive for >$25k seem to both be designed to encourage devs to focus on high-quality apps rather than flood the store with a lot of crappy ones. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there will be tons of crappy apps anyway, but hopefully a slightly better signal-to-noise ratio overall.

$1.49 is an awkward price, because it involves fractional dollars, and unwelcome mental calculations. The jump from $1.49 to $1.99 is easy to make, because $1.99 is way more attractive (how many $1.49 apps are there in the iOS app store?). From there, $1.99 to $2.99 is also easy, still only a 50% increase. Suddenly -POOF- you have a whole array of apps priced around 2-3-4 dollars, instead of a $.99 bloc. This raises the price floor of apps on the Windows market, and there are a multitude of studies describing how effective price anchoring can be.

One nit: There are exactly 0 apps on the iOS App Store priced $1.49, because it isn't possible to price an app at that amount (it goes up in increments of $1).

That said, I agree with you - I hope it successfully makes apps in the $2-$10 range more popular, which means developers can invest more time in them and make them better.

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