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The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, a

The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, ad networks, tracking, and lots and lots of psychological tricks. Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts. The race to the bottom is real.

danaris 7y ago
> Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore Except that's patently false. All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Sure, there are a lot more that are "free (with in-app purchases)", but the idea that no one can make money in the space is just totally absurd. Furthermore, even if what you said was true, it would not be a genuine example of what the previous poster was describing, because people are still making money off those freemium games. What the other poster was describing was prices going through the floor, no one being able to make money in that space, and the entire industry drying up and blowing away.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  > All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Yeah. They tend to have low sales numbers. I worked on one. Just because they exist, doesn't mean they make return on investment. When we switched to a free-to-play model for our next game, we made a lot more money in ads and IAPs. > because people are still making money off those freemium games Airlines took up of the practice of nickle-and-diming the customer to get the initial sticker shock down, since that's basically all anybody ever competed on. If that price gets any lower, the amount of extra addons and fees will have to go way up to compensate, or service will get cut. Just because some people are making money, doesn't mean it's a healthy market. I think most experts would agree that the mobile game market is incredibly unhealthy.
- acdha 7y ago
  I was curious — right now in the US store, 1/25 most popular (This War of Mine) is not freemium. 1/25 “Essential Picks” (Minecraft) is not freemium. I think your second point depends on how you divide things: clearly there is money in gaming but it does seem like it’s hard to make a game which doesn’t rely on IAP and slot-machine design — so much so that Apple launched an entire service to change the market dynamics.
- axus 7y ago
  I just bought Stardew Valley for $5, encouraged by my expiring Google Rewards credits :D
wrkronmiller 7y ago
I wonder how much these in-app-purchase tactics would be mitigated by Apple/Google listing the median per-person spend for each app: e.e “Free (with average $5.00 in-app fees)”
- PeterisP 7y ago
  The median will likely be 0 for almost all apps; it would be outrageously, extraordnary successful for a freemium app to convert 50% of its users to paying customers. The mean is also uninformative - for many games the majority of revenue is provided by a small number of 'whales', and their behavior is not representative for a normal user. Perhaps a histogram would give an accurate impression, but I'm unsure whether app devs and Apple/Google would want to make that info public.
  - Jasper_ 7y ago
    The latest numbers I've heard is that if you get 10% of your userbase to pay at least once, you're doing incredibly healthily. Whales tend to be a handful-per-100,000 ratio, but they spend like nothing else. Loot boxes are ridiculously effective because whales will roll for them until they get the rare prize, spending thousands of dollars in the process.
wpietri 7y ago
The claim was "kills an industry". SensorTower puts 2019 mobile games revenue at over $60 billion. [1] That doesn't sound very dead to me. [1] https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-2019 https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-2019
liability 7y ago
Alternatively, mobile game developers can't be assed make a game that's worth more than a dollar. Mobile devs aren't victims; their users are victims and they are the victimizers.
Dylan16807 7y ago
That's just a generic race to the bottom, isn't it? What does it have to do with minimum advertised prices?

danaris 7y ago

> Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore Except that's patently false. All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Sure, there are a lot more that are "free (with in-app purchases)", but the idea that no one can make money in the space is just totally absurd. Furthermore, even if what you said was true, it would not be a genuine example of what the previous poster was describing, because people are still making money off those freemium games. What the other poster was describing was prices going through the floor, no one being able to make money in that space, and the entire industry drying up and blowing away.

Jasper_ 7y ago
> All you have to do is look briefly on the iOS App Store and you'll find plenty of games for $5+. Yeah. They tend to have low sales numbers. I worked on one. Just because they exist, doesn't mean they make return on investment. When we switched to a free-to-play model for our next game, we made a lot more money in ads and IAPs. > because people are still making money off those freemium games Airlines took up of the practice of nickle-and-diming the customer to get the initial sticker shock down, since that's basically all anybody ever competed on. If that price gets any lower, the amount of extra addons and fees will have to go way up to compensate, or service will get cut. Just because some people are making money, doesn't mean it's a healthy market. I think most experts would agree that the mobile game market is incredibly unhealthy.
acdha 7y ago
I was curious — right now in the US store, 1/25 most popular (This War of Mine) is not freemium. 1/25 “Essential Picks” (Minecraft) is not freemium. I think your second point depends on how you divide things: clearly there is money in gaming but it does seem like it’s hard to make a game which doesn’t rely on IAP and slot-machine design — so much so that Apple launched an entire service to change the market dynamics.
axus 7y ago
I just bought Stardew Valley for $5, encouraged by my expiring Google Rewards credits :D

wrkronmiller 7y ago

I wonder how much these in-app-purchase tactics would be mitigated by Apple/Google listing the median per-person spend for each app: e.e “Free (with average $5.00 in-app fees)”

PeterisP 7y ago
The median will likely be 0 for almost all apps; it would be outrageously, extraordnary successful for a freemium app to convert 50% of its users to paying customers. The mean is also uninformative - for many games the majority of revenue is provided by a small number of 'whales', and their behavior is not representative for a normal user. Perhaps a histogram would give an accurate impression, but I'm unsure whether app devs and Apple/Google would want to make that info public.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  The latest numbers I've heard is that if you get 10% of your userbase to pay at least once, you're doing incredibly healthily. Whales tend to be a handful-per-100,000 ratio, but they spend like nothing else. Loot boxes are ridiculously effective because whales will roll for them until they get the rare prize, spending thousands of dollars in the process.

wpietri 7y ago

The claim was "kills an industry". SensorTower puts 2019 mobile games revenue at over $60 billion. [1] That doesn't sound very dead to me. [1] https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-2019 https://sensortower.com/blog/app-revenue-and-downloads-2019

liability 7y ago

Alternatively, mobile game developers can't be assed make a game that's worth more than a dollar. Mobile devs aren't victims; their users are victims and they are the victimizers.

Dylan16807 7y ago

That's just a generic race to the bottom, isn't it? What does it have to do with minimum advertised prices?