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Absoutely. I've published a small game experiment for iOS and didn't expect many purchases after bumping the price up to 99 cents, but the drop-off at even that
by guscost 12y ago
Absoutely. I've published a small game experiment for iOS and didn't expect many purchases after bumping the price up to 99 cents, but the drop-off at even that price point is remarkable. If Apple ever sent me a check I didn't notice it. Acquaintances would say "wow, cool!" and then not decide to spend a dollar and try it out. It seems that an enormous amount of self-promotion would be required to make better results likely.
The market clearly does not favor this kind of product, but the amazing thing is how often I still hear about friends wanting to get into selling software or games to consumers. I always tell them to consider getting into the enterprise market instead, which is comparatively boring but has a reasonable chance of providing non-trivial income. Say what you will about corporations, but they actually pay for software.
My advice to anyone with similar options is to sell software to businesses and maybe hardware to consumers. This effectively rules out most entertainment products. Some people are not discouraged by that, but those people will almost certainly be working day jobs for the foreseeable future anyway. I'm lucky to have enough free time and money where continuing work on these projects is possible without compromising on quality of life, but the odds are they will never be a primary source of income and I'm OK with that.
- imaginenore 12y agoOh, the entitlement. You simply didn't create something engaging enough. Popular games make a lot of money. Take Minecraft - it was created by one guy and made hundreds of millions of dollars before he actually turned it over to a team. Whining about models and price schemes and markets is pointless. If you want to make money, you have to create something people are willing to pay for.
- tree_of_item 12y agoNotch made a good game, sure, but Minecraft basically won the lottery. It's not a good example of anything. There are lots of other great games that fall victim to the phenomena described by guscost.
- Iftheshoefits 12y agoWhen discussing the mobile market, and especially the iOS mobile market, we are talking about a consumer who typically thinks nothing of dropping $4.50 for a 12 oz. cup of badly roasted espresso with steamed milk. That they don't want to pay $0.99 for something they think is "really neat" and arguably longer lasting than a cup of "cappuccino" says more about their (consumers') sense of entitlement than the value of the products under discussion.
- anon4 12y agoThat is only a small fraction of the mobile market. A much larger fraction is people who save money for a few months to afford a powerful handheld computer. And for them 4.50$ is closer to two lunches, than a single cappuccino.
- Iftheshoefits 12y agoThe market of automobile buyers includes the market of Tesla buyers as well as the market of Toyota buyers.
- guscost 12y agoI edited it down, but this: > The market clearly does not favor this kind of product Is the same as what you're saying. Obviously I didn't create something engaging enough to gain traction organically and become profitable. The point of the story was just to provide another anecdote supporting the claim that that is a difficult thing to do in the entertainment industry. I hope it did not come across as whining.