A $5 app isn't expensive: Customers need to help fix the App Store economy | Hacker News Reader

A $5 app isn't expensive: Customers need to help fix the App Store economy

macworld.com

12 pointsgspyrou5 comments

I sometimes purchase $5 - $10 games just because they do not have in-app purchases, as support for letting me pay for the game outright instead of Zyngafying it.

I especially love to give the author money when the game is great and they offer you a demo version!

For example, check out Thomas Zighem's incredible Genesia, a Populous + Civ style 4X strategy game, for which he offers a free "Lite" version and a dirt cheap pay version, with no in app purchases. It's an incredible game on the iPad, based on his circa '92 Amiga 500 game:

Review: http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Numb...

Indie developer's site: http://www.genesia-game.com/en/

App store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genesia-for-ipad-the-7-gems/i...

(I found this game by browsing the Strategy section and systematically looking at games over $5.)

I think this is a correct title but an incorrect subtitle.

The problem with spending five dollars on an app for me isn't that it isn't expensive, but rather I've paid five dollars for apps that opened once found to be unusable and never opened again. And I've done it over and over again…

And that's the problem freemium solves in the app store: it's a way of giving me a free trial to see if this app does what I need it to do, before I have to pay. It lets me separate out the lemons from the good stuff.

That's not what Freemium does at all. Look at the games list, and you'll see the Top Grossing are also the top Free. That's a problem. Many of them cannot be enjoyed without paying. Clash of Clans, for example, cannot be played w/o getting attacked unless you spend actual cash to get gems to get a "Shield" to keep from being attacked, and you cannot compete with good players unless you pay cash for gems to speed up building and troops. The top players are spending $2500 a month.

A more reasonable model is a Lite version and a Full version, or a combined lite and full with the in-app purchase to unlock the full. However, this model is a problem if the app is ever pulled, because each time you re-install you need to re-unlock, and may not be able to. I strongly prefer to delete the Lite version and install the Full version that I never have to unlock.

I absolutely hate this idea. It's supply and demand, make an app that's amazingly better then anything else on the market and charge more for it. The fact that developers constantly re-skin games/apps and then cry that the app store is ruined because of saturation is bs. If customers are not buying an app that's $5, its not worth $5, no matter how much value you "think" it has.

What idea do you hate? The article conclusion is:

> Spending money on great apps means not only do you get great apps now, but you’re also essentially investing in great apps later. Let’s fix the App Store economy, and let’s start by paying for apps without shuddering at $4 price tags.

He didn't say pay $4 for crap. He said "great apps".

(See my Genesia example elsewhere in this thread, which most customers will never discover because it's not in the top 20, not promoted by Apple ... and not free to rank for downloads with in-app purchases to drain your wallet if you dare trying to play it.)

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