Annoying your most eager customers can never be a good thing. Whether their feeling of recent is "fair" or not. I fully understand the idea behind the price-drop, but think it's a short-sighted strategy. Yes, it might work as a cross-promotion now, but in addition to annoying some people you are simply stating "Hey, if people don't buy our stuff, we'll give it away eventually." If you on the other hand release a great free title to begin with, word-of-mouth is sure to build your reputation. If GameProm had decided to release one free pinball game, as a "present" to their customers and then release a $.99 one a bit later I guess they would have the same cross-promotion effect without damaging their brand... It is somewhat similar to what happened in the DVD-market. The sale of full-price DVD's can't be helped by the fact that every title will be half-price in a few months. I have only anecdotal evidence, by hardly no anyone buying full-price movies regularly.
You have a point about the weaknesses of the rating-system. But at least it's the same for every title. The problem isn't necessarily the system but human-nature. Take a look at this thread,
No matter what the opinion is here you have to remember that boards like this represent a microscopic percentage of the market. Regardless of what you think there are way more people out there who will continue to buy the app as soon as it is released for whatever price it is released at and who will have absolutely no idea if and when the price is reduced. Lowering / removing the price is simply about exposure. Each dev / publisher does this on their own accord and they do it for one simple reason; To increase sales. While i agree that it would be nice for new apps to be priced lower to reward early adopters, ultimately it doesn't make economic sense due to the fact that there are so many more people who will purchase the game regardless of the initial price or without thinking / caring that it will drop in a few months. Generally apple products are well known for being more expensive than other brands. People that own apple products will stand in line for a new model that is only minimally different from the one they paid top price for six months ago. Do you really think that these people care about the difference between a few dollars?
Where does this thought process come from? Where does this sense of entitlement among "early adopters" of $3 iPhone games come from? Certainly not from the real world! In what other consumer industry do you pay less to be an early adopter? DVD players? Plasma Screen TVs? PCs? Why is it OK to spend $1,000 to be one of the first consumers to own a DVD player in the '90s, but it's "annoying" and "bad business" for a $3 app to drop in price? Everyone likes to call themselves "early adopters", but true early adopters don't go around whining about how the goods they rushed out to purchase at the bleeding edge are now less expensive than they once were. The whole point is that your "reward" is having the product before the great, unwashed masses can get their grubby hands on it. I have my own free will. If I want a game badly enough, I will buy it when I feel the price is fair. If the price goes down the next day, I might feel a natural ping of frustration, but I have no right to complain because my "reward" as an "early adopter" was having the game when I wanted it and enjoying it in the mean time. We all like a good deal, but nobody is entitled to one, least of all "early adopters", by sheer definition.
Whether early adopters are "right" in thinking they are punished for paying a higher price or not is really beside the point. Even the mighty Apple itself had a PR nightmare when they decided to lower the price for the iPhone. It is all about perception and if the customers feel they are being duped they will react negatively...
In other words the iPhone had a price reduction of approximately 30% while Wild West Pinball's price reduction was infinite. No, I see your point and I agree that it probably shouldn't matter, but clearly it will to some people. My main-point is simply that GameProm in a sense have made the statement that if people don't buy their products they will lower the price. Why would anyone care to pay "full-price" for a GameProm game in the future? I think it's simply bad sense when it comes to building their brand and it re-enforces the race-to-the-bottom-spiral-of-death of the App store when high quality titles like these are suddenly made free...
I usually wait for price drops on DVDs, sometimes I buy at full price the ones for which I simply can't wait I usually wait for price drops on Wii games, sometimes I buy at full price the ones for which I simply can't wait and so on... no sense in complaining, this is just how the market works. I don't see why prices in the app store shouldn't decrease after a while. The cool thing of being an early adopter is usually that you satisfied as soon as possible the desire of having that product, without the frustration of having to wait the price drop. The only difference in the app store is that in the other markets you usually don't get free stuff once in a while, but in most cases it's free stuff I wouldn't have paid for, so no harms on sales, and possible increase of interest in their new projects if I like the game.
Just to clarify: I am not complaining about having paid full price for this, or any other, app. I fully agree that a product has a value to the consumer at the time of purchase. As long as I was willing to pay the initial price I don't worry about it. For me the product was obviously worth what I paid at the time. I am not a bargain-hunter, although I hardly ever buy a film at its initial-price as I know it will go on a sale before I even blink. My beef is simply that I think this is a poor market-strategy from a developer's viewpoint. It could pay of in the short term but might hurt GameProm's name in the long run...
I think part of the problem is the AppStore timeframe. Apps can go from full price to a deeply discounted rate within the first couple of weeks. If the percent difference in price fluctuation were spread out over a greater length of time, I don't think people would notice or complain as much.
Well I guess time will tell. I grabbed this game - and its super cool - but as far as pinball tables go its pretty basic. I would be willing to bet the upcoming game is going blow this one out of the water and also be priced at a reasonable level. I probably would not have bought a pinball game period, but after playing this one, I will definitely keep my eyes open for GameProms next one and probably will be willing to spend a couple bucks on it! All that said... its not a strategy I would implement!!!
I don't know, I bought this game the first day it came out for $3. I think that was at the beginning of April, IIRC. I've gotten MORE than $3 worth of playtime between the time it came out until the time it went free. I don't think it damages Gameprom's reputation at all. They're just following the trends of the app store. I actually think it's a great idea for exposure. I've already heard countless people say they've never heard of this company or WWP before, but now that it's free, they've tried it out and are excited to see their future games. In fact, Gameprom could have straight up told me I could pay $3 to have WWP when it first released, or I could wait 2 and a half months and get it for free, well I'd still have paid the $3 to have it right away. I mean, it's only $3. If dropping this game to free has made you nervous that you might overspend $3, well then when The Deep finally comes out, don't buy it. Nobody is forcing you to. I'll gladly pay my $3, or however much they're gonna charge, and will play that game the day it comes out. And I'm sure I'll love every minute of it. If you don't buy it, you won't be enjoying it. Simple as that. Is a few dollars too much money to spend to enjoy something? And what if they never drop the price, will you just never play The Deep? Well that sucks, cause if you liked WWP, The Deep looks EVEN BETTER. So it really comes down to YOU (you in general, not saying this specifically to anyone ). I don't feel "duped" or "screwed" or any of that, even though I bought this game at full price. I think they've probably sold just about as many WWP as they were gonna sell, and so set it to FREE to give it to anybody who hadn't given it a shot yet. And make people aware of their new game. I have no problem with this whatsoever. Usually in life, people would do anything for certain things to go on sale. Only on the app store do people actually get MAD when something drops in price, or heaven forbid, gives something away for FREE. Rather than getting mad, we should be thanking Gameprom for this nice gift!
Yeah, I really can't understand the reaction here. Games are entertainment. Especially cheap throwaway games like these. They're not an investment and they have no value. If you bought the game three months ago and enjoyed it at the time then you got your money's worth. If you didn't enjoy it that's another matter entirely and I'd understand your complaint. But you had the game to play when you wanted to play it, so what's the problem? Looks at it this way, a movie in the theater will be on DVD in a few months and might be on TV for free sooner or later. You can pay $10 to see it when it's fresh and new, you can wait and pay $3 to rent it, or you can wait even longer and see if it comes on TV. Does anyone complain that they paid to see a movie in the theater when it's run for free on TBS? They complain if the movie sucked, sure, but it's accepted that that's how it goes.
I think this thread veered off in another direction than my original intensions, but I guess that's just the nature of the beast. I personally don't think it's particularly interesting whether it is fair that some customers are annoyed when products drop in price or not. As I stated earlier people obviously buy stuff at a price they feel is fair, otherwise they wouldn't make the purchase in the first place. Some people still feel it's unfair when something they just paid full-price for drops substantially in price. (I think this is probably covered in Psychology 101). Whether this feeling is "right" or not is a rather hopeless discussion as you can't tell people how to feel anyway. The real question is whether it hurts the developer or not. Personally I think you can get away with it once or twice, but if you drop the price on a regular basis you might end up with people feeling like former president Bush: "Fool me once, shame on shame on you. It fooled me Can't get fooled again." Despite the length of this paragraph this is actually not my main point. TO BE CONTINUED... INTERMISSION My main concern with the price-slashing strategy is the danger of eroding your own business-platform. While App Sniping probably isn't widespread in any sense of the word, the idea that anything costing more than a buck is "expensive" seems to be catching on. Frankly I am not surprised, as a lot of developers seems to cut the price the second their sales-figures take a dip. This is of course up to each individual developer but if consumers and reviewers know you have a history of lowering your prices, they might be less inclined to support your product at full price. It seems the perceived value of iPhone games in general is evaporating and it makes me sad. Recently Oyaji Games released the game "Mecho Wars" and while it might not quite match the "Advanced Wars"-games on the Nintendo DS, it is not too far from the mark. Considering the game was released with a $5 price-tag this release should have been met with standing ovations. It has received generally good reviews; but I think the following tidbits are illustrative of the state of the iPhone games-market: SlideToPlay gave the game 3/4 generally praising it, but stating among the cons: "Technical shortcomings; no online multiplayer." and this is for a really good strategy game, priced at five dollars. FIVE DOLLARS. How is the amount of entertainment you get from your fiver not worth a 4/4 score...? Touch Arcade also gave their thumbs up for the game, but concluded: "But given this mild uncertainty and an abundance of other games in the App Store, I might wait for the promised updates before buying it at its full $4.99 price." Of course reviewers are there to help the consumers, and are not a fault for the state of the market. It does help to demonstrate just where the race-to-the-bottom has taken us though. Of course this has already become a classic catch-22 scenario. Developers will cut their prices to achieve better sales, and the consumers will expect lower prices and become even less willing to pay more than a buck. I'm not sure if a path out of this "valley of shadows" even exists but to my mind developers who know they've created something truly substantial might be better off sticking to a price and letting people know they will be.
Well, one of the Advance War games for NDS is available for less than 10 bucks from Amazon... and it is supposedly a much more feature-rich game. I am still relatively early on in Mecho Wars and I really enjoy the presentation, but multiplayer aside it seems to have less gameplay depth than Reign of Swords or even Uniwar single-player. So, yes, there is definite room for improvement.
