headcase, Thumbs up great summary of the state of an indie dev. Would like to add one last prediction. Consumers will and already are jumping from free app to free app without ever buying a single app. Why would they? The free content is so overwhelming that it would take them a lifetime just to try out a quarter of it!
Exactly. It's like a special type of defense to stop pirating so don't complain Without free/lite apps, people like me will be twitchy on the BUY button, thinking (what the hell is this game) and move on. You are almost certain to lose profit if this happens, because most of the people who bought idevices are looking for free apps!
I'll maintain that a lot of free apps are just not properly enough designed (and that's owing to a lot of circumstances). when you make a lite version - especially in the case of a mobile app, as opposed to a console one - it's imperative that you are giving your audience a proper taste of what you are offering, but not so much that they "have enough," and not too little so that they aren't able to get what's going on. that's very difficult, particularly if you are building something that's riffing off of a well-known app already. it can be done, it just needs to be prioritized. you need to think long and hard about it, and test it, and test it some more. and even then, second-guess yourself. I am one of those who seldom buys a full after playing a lite. Why? Exact same reasons mentioned above - mind you I am a developer, and all I mostly will ever be interested in is "seeing how they did it" more so than getting a full experience, but once in awhile I'll come across something that will bowl me over and I'll say "oh this lite version is amazing but will not cut it, when I can pony up a couple of dollars for the full experience." When I played Drop7 Lite a few times, I totally got sucked in and had to buy the full almost immediately. Impressed me how well that worked! Not sure where things stand with my app. Do me a favor, and don't take this as me plugging my own project, but more trying to see if I was successful in my attempt - put out this lite version of 180 the other day. Give it a shot, and let me know if "it's enough" or, after a few plays, you start feeling the itch to own the full release.. (BTW, this was designed to be fairly playable for probably a good several says' worth of time, but hopefully addictive enough that sooner or later you'll crack and pony up $2!) Tell me what you think
There are certain apps that only make sense if they are free. It's useful to have dropbox, facebook and ebay apps, but I wouldn't pay for services that are free if I just open safari. Also many devs are finding free + DLC to be a profitable strategy.
No, a lot of people would stop buying at all and people like me wouldn't buy anything over a buck and then only when games really, really appeal to their tastes. I mean, playing the Lites exclusively is not very satisfying, is it? Just when the things get good, they are over. And for the cheap, cheap, price of the upgrade/full version, you can continue! Now, full games going free could be more of a problem. From personal experience, I tend to download a lot of them, but few manage to keep my attention beyond a couple of minutes. Still, there were some that I have played extensively and even finished. OTOH, free apps were what prompted me to make an Appstore account in the first place and from what I see around me, it is fairly typical. People sample the freebies and then start to buy, to greater or lesser extent. Or not. But without the lure of the free stuff they wouldn't have even registered, so...
headcase, That is a really good summary of the situation. Unfortunately, free and lite games are here to stay. On top of that, you now have users demanding games for free. Even if all free and lite versions were removed, consumers would jump to a different platform. All the other platforms will allow Flash, so you would have to compete against the glut of flash games and native games. I don't know how the market will get through this "phase", but in the meantime developers will gravitate toward simpler, casual games like doodle jump clones or bowling games.
BlueSolarSoftware I am with you, simple casual games will rule the store. If it cost more than 5000 $ to develop it is too risky ( for a small dev ). I am still eating dust on Caveman Test. Fits this category perfectly( great game and concept) but just doesn't sell. So my analysis is even the quick a gimmicky games will still have a rough time in the overcrowded market.
jeff, lets have you, me and andrew talk - iphone market is saturated; we released our games on the palm pre and we are seeing many more sales than on the iphone, namely because of this lack of saturation we should discuss moving forward, and how to deal properly with platform fragmentation
Well, IMO all lite (or whatever you call them) versions of apps should be removed and Apple should instead allow the developers to offer a demo/trial from the main apps page. Combine this with an easy way to upgrade your app to full version and I'm sure it would be a good thing for everyone..
And I remember when developers were concerned when pricing crashed to 99¢ thinking that was as low as it would go...
Dusse and Greg, How about this. If you charge for an app it needs to have the free version built in. If your app is free it can't have a paid version. Could it be this simple?
Well, there are some free apps that is good too. So i dont agree if apple wants to remove all lite/free apps.
