4 ms·

The market may never sort it out. Apple doesn't need to fix the app market to make money, and they're really the only one who can. So unless they start allowin

by wmil 10y ago

The market may never sort it out. Apple doesn't need to fix the app market to make money, and they're really the only one who can. So unless they start allowing third party stores, nothing will change.

djrogers 10y ago
> So unless they start allowing third party stores, nothing will change. What would a 3rd party store do to make profitability? Best case thy take zero revenue and you get 30% more money - from TFA it doesn't sound like 30% or even 300% would have made a difference....
- chc 10y ago
  A third-party store could do a lot of things differently other than just lower the revenue split — you could have a recommendation engine like Amazon, or you could add curation, or you could change the way search works, or any number of other (possibly crazier) things. Heck, you could literally just copy Steam in every respect and you'd end up with something significantly different from the current App Store.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Different stores would allow competition on store policies and inventory. Would a store that differentiates by disallowing certain in-app purchasing strategies by useful? It would to me, because I don't want to support companies that use certain sales strategies.
    - chii 10y ago
      By disallowing certain IAP tactics, the price of an app might rise to meet the required profit margin. Would you be willing to pay more in that case?
      - kbenson 10y ago
        > By disallowing certain IAP tactics, the price of an app might rise to meet the required profit margin. To the degree the market will bear that price, sure. I suspect we would see both a raise in prices (of course), but also a realignment at the studios as to what the expected profit margin is. > Would you be willing to pay more in that case? If I could demo it to confirm it was worth the cost, or there was a fairly thorough review, then yes. Even if the "demo" version was ad-supported (and/or limited in some other fashion), that would be fine with me, I could update to the ad-free paid version with less permissions required if it was good. The problem is that they've discovered that ad-supported doesn't hold a candle to in-app purchases powered by game resource scarcity. That gameplay doesn't generally translate well to a paid version (unlimited gameplay resources makes it no fun), and it's too much work to expect them to essentially make two different games. At this point I've basically given up on most app store apps. I do occasionally put the odd game on there from Humble Bundle though, and those are ones I pay for. You could say I'm getting a really good deal because I'm paying $5-15 for 5-10 games each time, but since I generally only play one of them...
      - chongli 10y ago
        Only in the case of professionally developed apps. There's tons of free (as in beer) apps out there that I just can't find because there's no way to filter out the IAP products. Personally, I'd just be satisfied if they made a new category FREE+IAP and then we could search for and browse genuinely free stuff.

by wmil 10y ago

djrogers 10y ago

> So unless they start allowing third party stores, nothing will change. What would a 3rd party store do to make profitability? Best case thy take zero revenue and you get 30% more money - from TFA it doesn't sound like 30% or even 300% would have made a difference....

chc 10y ago
A third-party store could do a lot of things differently other than just lower the revenue split — you could have a recommendation engine like Amazon, or you could add curation, or you could change the way search works, or any number of other (possibly crazier) things. Heck, you could literally just copy Steam in every respect and you'd end up with something significantly different from the current App Store.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Different stores would allow competition on store policies and inventory. Would a store that differentiates by disallowing certain in-app purchasing strategies by useful? It would to me, because I don't want to support companies that use certain sales strategies.
  - chii 10y ago
    By disallowing certain IAP tactics, the price of an app might rise to meet the required profit margin. Would you be willing to pay more in that case?
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > By disallowing certain IAP tactics, the price of an app might rise to meet the required profit margin. To the degree the market will bear that price, sure. I suspect we would see both a raise in prices (of course), but also a realignment at the studios as to what the expected profit margin is. > Would you be willing to pay more in that case? If I could demo it to confirm it was worth the cost, or there was a fairly thorough review, then yes. Even if the "demo" version was ad-supported (and/or limited in some other fashion), that would be fine with me, I could update to the ad-free paid version with less permissions required if it was good. The problem is that they've discovered that ad-supported doesn't hold a candle to in-app purchases powered by game resource scarcity. That gameplay doesn't generally translate well to a paid version (unlimited gameplay resources makes it no fun), and it's too much work to expect them to essentially make two different games. At this point I've basically given up on most app store apps. I do occasionally put the odd game on there from Humble Bundle though, and those are ones I pay for. You could say I'm getting a really good deal because I'm paying $5-15 for 5-10 games each time, but since I generally only play one of them...
    - chongli 10y ago
      Only in the case of professionally developed apps. There's tons of free (as in beer) apps out there that I just can't find because there's no way to filter out the IAP products. Personally, I'd just be satisfied if they made a new category FREE+IAP and then we could search for and browse genuinely free stuff.