Pharmx I personally love to listen to the ingame music and the samples that were given were amazing. Yes achievements would be great and if possible make it viewable offline if possible. On the pricing its your call, as we are just TA members and we are the HC gamers (you should know that). I don't know if 4.99 would work out too well though no matter how good the game as you are new to the market. I know your will be so much different that the average word game (and probably better) most word games arent priced very high and the average consumer may compare and think its too high also may work double edged as they may think its a premier game....I'm not sure and and def not an expert but just responding to the question.
Couldn't have answered all of the above any better! Thanks skyye for taking the words out of my mouth!!!!
pricing my .02 - i pay $4.99 for games without blinking. my wife, never more than $1.99. never. Kept telling her how she'd love peggle. Nope, too much. For the HC gamers, $4.99 is probably a reasonable price, but of course, you can really see a backlash if too many people think the price is too high. Even HC gamers (maybe even, especially amongst HC gamers). As painful as it might be, perhaps an approach where you introduce it at $1.99 or $2.99 and try to get some reviews, and some people taking a chance on it. After a couple weeks, maybe bump it up. But when you bump it, maybe also have an update with more content. Not trying to muddy the waters, so hopefully the .02 is helpful. also, I think the game music should be the ONLY option. Of course, I'm biased that way
I agree with this, although I would happily pay up to $4.99, the general audience of the appstore still has trouble accepting anything over $2. And likewise, although your game is unique and polished, at a higher price, you are directly competing with big developers such as Gameloft. And because this is your first game, a lower price range would probably benefit, although if you do think the game is worth $4.99, by all means, price it at what you think its worth, and the number of buying customers will reflect the value of the game.
I wouldn't charge $4.99 unless I had a publisher backing me. If I go the self publishing route I'd most likely go with $2.99. That gives me the freedom to drop down 2 price points if necessary.
2.99 sounds the appropiate price for the masses as from what I see. Did you already make an icon that we can see? Also make sure to do the screenshots right and to make a video (but of course you already know that)
Great. Totally missed the whole beta discussion. Anyway... I always listen to the game's own music. Developers put effort into the sound and music the exact same way they do the graphics, the least I can do is experience it as intended. $2.99 would be nice but word games aren't strictly my thing, so it'd need some good feedback.
I can see the arguments for both prices. I can also see that $2.99 gives freedom to go up after a special "intro pricing" or down for a special "three day sale." Or whatever - you get my point. Want to see sales skyrocket but also want to see pharmx make some money!
Pricing is a little tough to determine for this because the prices are all over the place. For word games, it seems like most are in the 99 cent to $1.99 range. But this is also where a lot have settled, after being a higher price initially. The rpg landscape is a bit different, with even greater variation with respect to pricing. If content alone were the determining factor, this would be much easier. But since brand awareness and perception of word games have to be taken into account, it gets complicated.
Do you guys think raising the price after adding more features is a good idea? Or should that be done via DLC or a new version (deluxe or pro version)
Raising the price with new features certainly rewards early adopters, but those people who for whatever reason did not feel compelled to purchase at the original price will likely continue to balk if the price goes up. But they might get the game now that it has more features. If you have a deluxe or pro version then are you saying you would have a less full featured but full game at a lower price available. If you did that then you would need to have an upgrade option available for those that purchase the non-deluxe version so that they can upgrade to "pro". I haven't seen DLC used very extensively yet. So hard to tell since TA users and their opinions may not reflect the average population of app purchasers and their opinions.
The way I see it DLC has not taken off like Apple had thought it would, pricing was a main factor IMO. With $0.99 games dominating the appstore, I don't think most people would pay $0.99 for a game and $0.99 for DLC. I think Apple should have a special price tier for DLC, possibly allowing devs to price DLC at less than $0.99.
I personally welcome DLC but then you will have the face of accusations saying why they should pay for it when it should be free and that they don't have a full game
well, i guess i can have the DLC as non-essential stuff...that way people shouldn't have an issue with that
I don't know if I agree with a special tier that's lower than $0.99 for DLC. It's probably best to just not have DLC for games that are only $0.99 to begin with. However, I'm surprised that some of the more expensive games from the big developers/publishers are not fully utilizing this yet. Maybe everyone is waiting to see someone properly (or successfully) implement it before committing significant resources towards it. From what I've been seeing/hearing Eliminate may be that title. I actually thought that those mafia type games would be the first to jump on this bandwagon.
Looks like Agon might not be able to do what I need it to, so the online leaderboards will be custom made That leaves the achievement system and social platform integration (twitter/facebook) open....currently leaning towards OpenFeint for that...
The people love openFeint, I would definitely go with that, especially since the more devs that use it will probably in turn make openfeint better in the long run.
