Loose Threads: Should iPhone games have a minimum charge?

The gloves are off this week – it seems that it's always easiest to touch a nerve when there is money involved. The App Store and the subject of pricing has certainly been ruffling feathers round our way of late, though not necessarily for the reasons you might expect.

You get what you pay for, or so the annoyingly oversubscribed platitude goes, but not it seems when it comes to the App Store. Featured this week is the fantastic Jelly Car which, to make use of another oft repeated axiom, would be a bargain at twice the price.

But it's not all sunshine and deliciously playable soft body physics – there are plenty of stinkers on the App Store, too, and in fact some might even say that the good titles are sinking fast in shovelware quicksand, prompting us to ask, 'Should iPhone games have a minimum charge?'

Taking the bull by the horns first of all was a forum old hand, TazUK:

"As someone who is hoping to get into games development for the iPhone/iTouch I think that the current state of the Apple Store is a bit worrying. Games selling at 59p is a bit ridiculous as it means anyone hoping to make a living from it is a bit hard pushed to get the price they deserve.

This surely isn't good for the developer or Apple as a higher price means more profits. When I do eventually release a game I'm looking at a price point of at least £1.99; you can't argue with that. If a developer releases a 'casual' game that is good enough then they should at least expect this sort of price point.

Triple-A games from major developers such as EA, Sega, etc should quite easily sell for £9.99. We don't expect to pay less than £20 for DS games do we? If Apple intend to compete with the DS then they need to get quality games to sell at a price that the big firms will be happy with.

So yes Apple should only allow for a certain range of price points and therefore create a minimum starting point, i.e. £1.99, £4.99 and maybe £9.99 for triple-A titles.

As to the state of the ratings in the Apple Store I do think they need to look at it and base the position of games by user ratings rather than pure sales. Currently a lot of developers are dropping the price point of the games/apps they sell so that they generate more sales and hence end up in the top 25, therefore causing everyone else to drop the price."

Well, be sure to give us a heads up when we can try out your game for ourselves, TazUK. In response to your points however, actually, we'll just let Gideon B do the talking:

"iPhone Games should not have a minimum charge, but definitely a maximum charge. I remember that game which a guy made like £250k or something and it cost £600, and all it said was that you were rich. I think that games should have a maximum charge of £10/$25. But I doubt Apple will listen, because they already shut out the iPod hacking community with their encrypted firmware.

Will we see any type of minimum charge? Probably, but you never know do you? I would love to see Apple just tell everyone that their games can't be free. That would annoy most gamers. I am not going to buy an iPhone/iPod touch, but I may get a T-Mobile G1 because the marketplace (as my friend showed me) doesn't have the broken functionality, but Apple either needs to set a maximum price limit, or will just do what they normally do and make a minimum price limit. Why can't they be free? That's my question. iPhone games should/can be free. Apple shouldn't make a minimum price limit. That's my idea on it."

Well presently a good many of them are free, Gideon B, but some would argue that that's part of what makes the App Store 'broken' as you put it. Perhaps the Android Marketplace will learn from Apple's mistakes, but back on topic Mandark squared up with some fighting talk:

"No I don't think iPhone games should have a minimum charge. Bedroom coders should be allowed to offer their games for free in order to get noticed. You need to work through the rubbish to get at the shining lights. And is it really true that people expect free or cheap games?

My personal belief is that the iPhone has not yet got into the hands of many of the hardcore mobile gamers. They are the guys who will happily pay £5 for games on network portals. Many of these are quite young 13-17 and probably can't afford an iPhone or iPod touch yet. Let's not forget that these devices are not exactly cheap.

That means many of those perusing the app store may be relatively older people who are very casual gamers at best and balk at spending almost anything on games. So I guess what I'm saying is that we're dealing with a skewed market with the App Store. What's going on with the network portals and developer stores is more indicative of the true picture of who's prepared to pay what."

All good points, but surely both the iPhone and the iPod touch are reasonably popular with 18- to 30-year-olds, i.e. the demographic that makes up the lion's share of the hardcore gaming market. Indeed, some of the more hardcore licences have been some of the best sellers on the App Store (Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is a prime example).

Moving on, the usually very punctual hunter_alien claimed the last word:

"A 3 euro price tag should be the minimum. But unfortunately there are so many crappy games on the App Store that many games just don't deserve that price either. So what should they do? Easy. Have a quality check before releasing the damn game. By allowing every 2 cent crappy game to hit the Apple Store they are destroying every other quality game's chance of ever pulling a profit, or having a sequel."

Well to be fair everything published on the App Store does go through Apple's quality sieve, but it seems that there must be a few holes in it. To conclude, hunter_alien remarked:

"The most important thing for Apple to do is to create a market where competition is possible. And setting a minimum price tag and getting a decent quality assurance team would be a great start."

We'd argue that games should still be made available for free if the developers want them to be, but perhaps part of the burden of quality assurance should be placed on the users themselves. A feedback system that helps users to flag up what is worth downloading to one another would go a long way towards combating the shovelware epidemic. Apple, if you are listening…

And now for next week's banter fuel:

Is GTA on the DS really such a good idea?

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