I'm inclined to agree but you have to be careful not to stumble into price fixing. I think the problem is that developers scrambled to say "look at my cheap game that offers so much" when there were few choices, so even at $0.99 they made a lot of money. Now with 30,000 developers and too many apps to count that just doesn't work anymore. The iPad is a do-over of sorts, and I'm wondering what will come of it all. If people are planning to enter at $0.99 and stay there, that's bad for the overall market trend. If people want to try a little higher because of the added real estate, capacity and abilities of the hardware, that's good. Look at software for any other platform (aside from mobile) and they would scoff at these prices and not make anything. Go figure.
FWIW, I don't think price fixing is an issue in this case. As long as we're talking about prices from the perspective of MSRP-type guidelines and not directly colluding on what our prices are, everything should be fine. Especially since I don't feel it's right to tell developers what to do with their app. Each developer still needs to decide for themselves. With published guidance they simply have less of a vacuum to work in. (Of course, IANAL so contact proper legal representation if you are concerned.) Indeed. Even when I got my iPhone last June, the market was pretty bare. Having anything that looked even half-way decent at $0.99 was an insta-buy. Now I'm so flooded with free stuff that it's even harder to keep up with the really good paid stuff. Interesting trends we've seen... I certainly hope so. The 99 billion nanopennies ($0.99) price point makes some sense when you're talking about a limited device with a small screen. When you're talking about a PC-level experience, it's certainly not unreasonable to ask $5. One of my favorite indies charges a whopping $19.95 for their games! That's probably a bit overpriced any way you cut it, but it's still something he can reasonably charge. Let's make sure we give the same impression for the iPad.
I understand all the arguments and I know how controversial my point of view is, but I very adamantly believe the problem is caused by the developers themselves. I've worked in retail and marketing for several years and I would never have seen a business approach a market the same way I see some of the developers on this forum talking about it — So many of you treat price as your primary marketing mechanism. When I see threads asking, "should I price my game at 0.99 or 1.99 ?", I see nobody else to blame but yourselves. I think too many of you have been listening to the minority — albeit vocal that they are — who say they will only buy apps at 99¢. I think it's obvious they're not the majority of App store buyers, indicated most easily by the pricing of the most successful games in the App store charts: Call of Duty Zombies, Super Monkey Ball, Grand Theft Auto, Ravensword, Space Ore bust, — All hugely successful and profitable games, all between $4.99 - $9.99+. Before you argue that a couple of those titles are big name franchises, it doesn't matter — It still proves that gamers will pay premium prices for apps if it's a good enough app and marketed properly. You're forgoing proper marketing and instead asking for Apple to provide the answer by separating big games from small indie games into their own stores. This is the worst possible thing I believe could happen to indie development; you may think it's a good idea in theory but I just see the casual iPhone owners going ONLY to the premium store for their games after that, making a market that favors the EAs, Ubisofts, Gamelofts, and Segas of the game industry. I really hope I'm not alienating any friends by saying this, but I really do believe the problem is a lack of business and marketing acumen on the parts of most developers, and not a problem with the App store. And I fear these problems will simply be repeated on the iPad App store if developers don't begin imitating the business models of the professional developers who are successfully selling their apps at $9.99 or more.
