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This is a non-businessman's response to a non-businessman's problem. Pricing should be based on the value a customer receives for your product, regardless if i

This is a non-businessman's response to a non-businessman's problem. Pricing should be based on the value a customer receives for your product, regardless if it "feels" or "seems" expensive. Instead of asking everyone else to raise their prices, why not demonstrate more value to your users or educate them on why the pricing is the way it is? Or maybe, the value being experienced by his users just isn't worth the price he's charging.

fhd2 13y ago
"The value a customer receives from a product" is somewhat hard to define for games. So I'd argue there's only a perceived value. And large parts of the industry are working hard to drive that perceived value down. What he does is charge more, so that he has fewer, more pleasant customers paying more. And it works out for him financially. Seems like a businessman to me.
- nemesisj 13y ago
  There is really no difference between perceived value and value. I'd bet that his sales of his app follow a supply demand curve almost perfectly. I'm not sure if that makes him a businessman, but what certainly won't work is advocating some kind of "minimum price cartel" that agrees that "higher prices are deserved".
  - Silhouette 13y ago
    There is really no difference between perceived value and value. If that were true, a large part of the marketing profession wouldn't exist. Marketing is mostly about figuring out what has actual value to the market so you can build something valuable, and then presenting that something to the market such that hopefully the perceived value does reflect the actual value so they go ahead with a purchase. The second part is much harder if you're in a crowded market and your competition are pitching low than it is if you can get your potential customers to focus on your own offer in isolation. In the case of selling professional or high-end software via mobile app stores, we concluded a long time ago that the WarGames principle usually applies. Alternative business models, such as giving away free mobile apps used to access resources that are purchased independently, or going Web-based rather than mobile-based, seem to be much more reasonable bets commercially in the current environment.
dylangs1030 13y ago
This is right. As much as we as developers would love to raise our prices, we exist in an insular world where we all understand the development process. Users and customers don't care how long it took to build an app - it's replaceable and they can afford to pass it up. Developers can't afford to have users pass their software up. The market is dictated by customers, not the other way around. Like it or not, the app economy (in its current state) rewards those who deal with this reality and break out of it somehow. It's ugly and not ideal, but accepting this is the first step to finding success. On the other hand, encouraging people to charge more for a beautifully designed, but otherwise replicable game is useless. The highest grossing apps consistently are the first in their niche, do something none of the competitors can, or have incredible financial and engineering endeavors to get noticed.
jiggy2011 13y ago
The problem with mobile apps is that I often don't have a clear idea of the value I will receive. I've bought apps in the past that I have literally never used. At $1 this doesn't really matter because I will also occasionally buy a $1 app which gives me way more than $1 in value. So really I may have paid $10 for that useful app, but the problem is that the person who wrote that useful app only gets 1/10 of the money. The other 9/10 is distributed among those who developed the useless (to me) apps. The answer as you suggest is to demonstrate the value before purchase. I think the problem here is that the app store model is often not conductive to that, you often just get a couple of bad screenshots and 1 paragraph of text. On the other hand I will usually do more research when buying desktop software, simply because doing research on a desktop computer is less painful (I have a big screen and a proper keyboard).
- StavrosK 13y ago
  What about the trial? You can try it out for 15 minutes, at least on Android.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    15 minutes isn't really long enough. Especially since you often need that long just to download an update. 15 minutes might be ok for a $1 app, but it should scale with price. If I'm going to pay $100 I probably want a month trial.
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      I agree that 15 minutes isn't very long, but you also aren't paying $100 for an Android app, so it's probably long enough.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        I might pay $100 for an app though , if I had confidence that it was worth the $100. I think that google probably prefers that there be thousands of cheap apps rather than a small number of good ones.

fhd2 13y ago

"The value a customer receives from a product" is somewhat hard to define for games. So I'd argue there's only a perceived value. And large parts of the industry are working hard to drive that perceived value down. What he does is charge more, so that he has fewer, more pleasant customers paying more. And it works out for him financially. Seems like a businessman to me.

nemesisj 13y ago
There is really no difference between perceived value and value. I'd bet that his sales of his app follow a supply demand curve almost perfectly. I'm not sure if that makes him a businessman, but what certainly won't work is advocating some kind of "minimum price cartel" that agrees that "higher prices are deserved".
- Silhouette 13y ago
  There is really no difference between perceived value and value. If that were true, a large part of the marketing profession wouldn't exist. Marketing is mostly about figuring out what has actual value to the market so you can build something valuable, and then presenting that something to the market such that hopefully the perceived value does reflect the actual value so they go ahead with a purchase. The second part is much harder if you're in a crowded market and your competition are pitching low than it is if you can get your potential customers to focus on your own offer in isolation. In the case of selling professional or high-end software via mobile app stores, we concluded a long time ago that the WarGames principle usually applies. Alternative business models, such as giving away free mobile apps used to access resources that are purchased independently, or going Web-based rather than mobile-based, seem to be much more reasonable bets commercially in the current environment.

dylangs1030 13y ago

This is right. As much as we as developers would love to raise our prices, we exist in an insular world where we all understand the development process. Users and customers don't care how long it took to build an app - it's replaceable and they can afford to pass it up. Developers can't afford to have users pass their software up. The market is dictated by customers, not the other way around. Like it or not, the app economy (in its current state) rewards those who deal with this reality and break out of it somehow. It's ugly and not ideal, but accepting this is the first step to finding success. On the other hand, encouraging people to charge more for a beautifully designed, but otherwise replicable game is useless. The highest grossing apps consistently are the first in their niche, do something none of the competitors can, or have incredible financial and engineering endeavors to get noticed.

jiggy2011 13y ago

The problem with mobile apps is that I often don't have a clear idea of the value I will receive. I've bought apps in the past that I have literally never used. At $1 this doesn't really matter because I will also occasionally buy a $1 app which gives me way more than $1 in value. So really I may have paid $10 for that useful app, but the problem is that the person who wrote that useful app only gets 1/10 of the money. The other 9/10 is distributed among those who developed the useless (to me) apps. The answer as you suggest is to demonstrate the value before purchase. I think the problem here is that the app store model is often not conductive to that, you often just get a couple of bad screenshots and 1 paragraph of text. On the other hand I will usually do more research when buying desktop software, simply because doing research on a desktop computer is less painful (I have a big screen and a proper keyboard).

StavrosK 13y ago
What about the trial? You can try it out for 15 minutes, at least on Android.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  15 minutes isn't really long enough. Especially since you often need that long just to download an update. 15 minutes might be ok for a $1 app, but it should scale with price. If I'm going to pay $100 I probably want a month trial.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    I agree that 15 minutes isn't very long, but you also aren't paying $100 for an Android app, so it's probably long enough.
    - jiggy2011 13y ago
      I might pay $100 for an app though , if I had confidence that it was worth the $100. I think that google probably prefers that there be thousands of cheap apps rather than a small number of good ones.