"On a more personal level it also worries me that this is drawing away money from the rest of the eco-system." This fear is likely completely unfounded on mult

"On a more personal level it also worries me that this is drawing away money from the rest of the eco-system." This fear is likely completely unfounded on multiple levels. Firstly, nobody is spending all of their money on iTunes. Generally, most people won't even budget for it. That means that most purchases on the app store are 'spur of the moment' in which a consumer will see something they want and buy it. That's also why cheap purchases work best there. So no matter how many $1 in app purchases someone makes, the chance of them 'running out of money' and stopping purchases of all app store products is somewhere close to 0. Secondly, once you start charging 19.99, someone is far less likely to just say 'eh, let me try it'. People will still buy this if they can work out that they need/want it, but it will be a longer process involving searching for reviews and/or getting feedback from people around them. The number of in-app purchases that consumer makes is unlikely to affect this process. In effect, large apps and small apps are probably completely different markets. On a completely unrelated note though: if you try to sell me required items in the game for real money, I'm uninstalling your app on the spot. This seems to be a growing trend among a small share of consumers, so we'll see how it goes.