Subscribe: Twitter or RSS

Crumbling ground: 59p, for a limited time

Feature by Ben Briggs, October 16, 2009

59p is not a sustainable price point. Is it a good price point? Of course it is, for the consumer, in the short term. What we are witnessing now is a time where you can buy a fully featured iPhone title for this price, and seemingly any developer who dares price above this point gets slammed by people decrying attempts of extortion and daylight robbery.

Wait, what?

Let's go back about a year when the App Store opened it's virtual doors. With relatively low shelves, the most expensive game that you could buy a copy of was Super Monkey Ball for £5.99. This title had wowed Apple enthusiasts (and anyone else who cared to watch Apple keynote addresses) especially for the, at the time, low price point. £5.99 is a perfectly reasonable amount to expect for a game like SMB - it has a great selection of worlds and levels, and is basically a premium example of the rich handheld gaming experiences that the App Store can bring to life. Today, you can buy it for just £2.39.

Part of the problem then was that Apple didn't have a restriction on user reviews. Anyone could login with an iTunes Store account and write a damning review for SMB because it seemed, in their eyes, too expensive. And how dare a different developer come up with another title that was equally priced if it didn't live up to the quality that SMB offered? Understandably so, when developers saw one star reviews all over their products they lowered the price to compensate - in the hope that the people writing these reviews would revise them to reflect the new, more attractive price point.

The high end of the market was set right then. People didn't feel like paying more than £5.99 for a game unless it had killer features such as online multiplayer or high scoring. Many developers priced their wares below the premium price point, with £1.79 being a sweet spot between too cheap and premium. Indeed, you could pick up Dizzy Bee for this price which at the time was incredible for a polished, original title.

As the App Store's shelves became ever longer, higher and more numerous, Apple eventually fixed the rating system. By this point the damage was already done; many developers had resorted to using fire sale tactics to push their software libraries. Indeed, it was becoming increasingly difficult to release apps at £5.99. People would leave reviews (especially about applications) saying the functionality was great but the price was too high. Most of these people are not qualified to write at least something in clear English, let alone a software review.

Then began a trend to dropping prices to as little as 59p to boost sales momentum, a technique popularised by Pangea Software with their library of iPhone games that were almost exclusively ported from their Mac counterparts. Seemingly random 'limited time' offers shot the developer's titles straight into App Store Top 100, which then of course generated more sales. People are loathe to picking through thousands of games, and so getting on the top lists managed to create a massive buzz around Pangea's games.

By this point we started to hear iPhone success stories in the mainstream news. Stories of making thousands of dollars in a week seemed common, and with this gold rush mentality just about everyone was, or was planning to, write an iPhone game to cash in on Apple's hit new phenomenon. Oft quoted stories are regarding games such as iShoot by Ethan Nicholas or Steve Demeter's Trism. People who were writing apps realised that the only way to get such exposure and sales was to drop the price to 59p to try and get on the top 100 list.

This, in turn was generally pushing prices down. Because of the way the App Store Top 100 list works, sales were measured in total units and not by revenue. Obviously, 59p is a much more desirable price point than say £2.99, but what was interesting here is that nobody wanted just to let applications just sit there and sell. Left, right, centre - all you saw was 50% OFF, LIMITED TIME SALE plastered over game descriptions, and App Store icons. Even Peggle, a top quality game that initially retailed at £2.99 (a fraction of what it costs everywhere else) was dropped to 59p shortly after release. Of course, that was only for a few days, but it seemed to start a trend. Suddenly, everyone was 'peggling' their games (a term coined by Pocket Gamer).

Back to the present day, and we have a new game that's created a lot of hate around various communities and of course the iTunes Store reviews over price: Canabalt. For those not in the know, Canabalt is a decidedly tasty slice of best App Store pie, which can also be played completely free of charge online. What amazes me about this whole situation is that people aren't buying blind - they have the opportunity to play the game numerous times over online, in their browser. £1.79 is hardly bank breaking, and yet these people are moaning that it should be 59p. Why? I paid more than that for the cappuccino I had at lunch.

And yet, on a rather expensive device in the first place it's a big deal when it's not a small amount of change. People are starting to get stingy. There's a massive amount of games in the App Store priced at pocket change, so when developers try and price at a reasonable price point they get lambasted as a result.

Virtually no game in the App Store is "too expensive". There's a lot of junk, sure, but there's some amazing titles that you can download right now. Green Fingers and Doodle Jump are perfect examples of what should constitute a 59p game; there's fantastic games like Reflexion that take existing gameplay and extend it in new directions; and finally games like Gomi that push the boat out with regards to large amount of content.

The biggest change is coming in the form of downloadable content packs for existing games. Now that Apple have given the go ahead for DLC in free games, we can start to see the potential for making lite versions obsolete and instead focusing on providing additional content to games that are free, but only come with a certain amount of depth or levels. You can already see Rolando 2 has a new free version in the App Store, that allows you to play the first level set for no charge - but adds the others in the form of content packs at 59p per pack (and £1.19 for the final pack). It remains to be seen whether this move will be popularised by future releases, but we're hoping this will catalyse invigoration of the Store - raising prices and creating a better overall standard of games in the process.

Isn't that what you want?

Share this article!

Media gallery