Digital Chocolate slashes its BlackBerry App World games prices
But the iPhone is still printing all its money
The pricing structure for BlackBerry’s App Store rival, the App World, undeniably surprised the industry. Most titles, which are currently ports of Java games, are weighing in at £7.85, but it seems Digital Chocolate is following a couple of other publishers in reducing its prices to match the current market standards.
Standards that are essentially being set by the iPhone. The most expensive iPhone game is still cheaper than the standard App World price point, and as Trip Hawkins told VentureBeat, that’s a price tag that doesn’t really match the quality of development.
“It's not so hard to dump an entire library of games on another platform that supports Java. Everybody else is a couple of years behind Apple,” he says.
The reason for his love for the iPhone becomes quite clear as he delves into DChoc’s finances, which are almost entirely supported by the App Store now.
"It's by far our most effective platform. We make as much money with these games on one device as we do putting a game on 100 different cell phone platforms,” Hawkins explains.
But it seems DChoc is still watching the App Store carefully, aiming to build the kind of sustainable marketing model that expensive, outmoded App World games will struggle to maintain at the current price point.
“We notice that brands don’t do that well on the iPhone, nor do generic games like poker or bowling. A lot of brands aren’t going to cut it. I’d expect that original titles that are built for the platform will become the new brands on the iPhone.
"It’s like the birth of the web. People thought Disney and NBC would dominate the web. That didn’t turn out to be true. It’s a new medium dominated by new brands.”
