I suppose in an ideal app store world, you would be able to upgrade an app to another version if you bought one already. Like, if I only have an iPhone and buy the iPhone versions. Then I get an iPad down the line. My iTunes account knows what games I already bought/own -- so it would be great if it saw I paid 99 cents for iPhone World of Goo and deduct that from the current iPad/Universal price (if currently 99 cents, then I'd get it for free, or if full price, deduct the 99 cents). Just seems silly/greedy to have to pay twice for the same game.
World of Goo had to go through a lot to downscale the environments so that they would work on an iPhone. It's a complex world that just barely worked for me on the iPad. For them to tweak it enough to get it to work on the iPhone is awesome. As for the problems, I will always believe that allowing people that don't own 2 devices to pay less for an app. If I only had an iPhone and I could save $1 or more to not have a universal app, I'd much more happily do that. Honestly, though, that the iPhone version is exactly the same, 80.6 megs, how can it NOT hold the universal version? But you're paying less, so like with console games, there's probably a switch that forces it in phone version only. World of Goo made the original app into a universal version. So what I paid for I can run on both. It then created a lower priced iPhone only version. Unwrapper - yes, that would be great, but the app store simply isn't complex enough to work like that. Your best bet, if you even think you may possibly upgrade, is drop the money for the universal version. But to your argument, you aren't paying twice for the same game. Although some iPhone games are just scaled up versions of the iPhone app, many include new/different artwork, features, etc. most of the time, pixel doubling from an iPhone app isn't enough and they need to redesign the app for it to fit. Just try taking an iPhone app and use it in 2x mode. THAT said, seriously. Buy buy buy. If you don't have an iPad and never plan on getting one, save your money and pick this up. 2D Boy puts endless effort in what they do. I can't recommend it enough.
Yeah, but it'll give them an incentive too to purchase a high priced app on their iPad knowing that the price was reduced from universal version. It's not so much that people are just upset, but it's also that people are losing money in ways that they shouldn't and it's not so much a concern for the games' ratings. And developers will make the same amount of money. If the buyer wants both the iPad and iPhone version, the person who wants the game on both his/her device will buy both versions instead of the universal one. And yeah, I do recognize that having 2 different versions entirely is rare, but even so, having two separate versions reduce confusion because you can only see the compatible version.
