Should iPhone games have a minimum charge?

Our very own Tracy Erickson wrote an excellent article, 'Apple's 99 cent store', a couple of days ago and it ignited an inferno of discussion. We thought it unfair to deprive the forum of getting in on the fun (that and I couldn't think of anything nearly as good this week), so guess what this week's Loose Threads topic is going to be?

It's a contentious argument, so before we all go charging in like a herd of clumsy diplodocus in the haberdashery department of Marks and Spencer, a little elucidation is required.

Should developers be backed into a corner in terms of how their applications are priced and distributed in order to make it easier for consumers to avoid shovelware on the App Store?

Or should the App Store remain as open to developers as it is now, so that developers experience less barriers in getting their product to market but at the expense of making the channel less focussed at the consumer end?

Will the ever rising tide of shovelware scare off bigger developers, ultimately limiting the iPhone's third-party support and bigger established IPs? Conversely, would limiting what appears on the App Store make fantastic indie developed freebies such as Jelly Car and Aurora Feint a thing of the past?

Or is there another solution to the problem of shovelware on the App Store? Is the App Store's feedback and ratings system broken? What could be done to improve the App Store so that consumers had a better idea of which games to avoid and which they can't afford to miss?

You know what to do…