Actually the iPod touch is the same prices as a XBox 360 (at least in europe), but the games are much cheaper in price... and you get the advantage that you can play them everywhere. Additionally you can buy once and put the game on 5 devices without additional costs. The reason why games are so incredible cheap or often even free is that Apple wants it like that - the goal is to sell as many devices as possible. That's why everything in the App Store is sorted and ranked by downloads, the minimum price is 0.99 and you can even sell free games. In my opinion it's a similar strategy as with iTunes - Apple said that they don't want to make money with iTunes: they want to make money by selling iPods.
I think piracy on the iphone is a major hurdle for this industry to overcome. The VAST majority of people that are developing iphone games aren't EA or Activision or some huge conglomerate. For the first time in a long time there's a platform where two kids in an apartment with a little start up scratch and a concept can put their game toe to toe with the "big boys" and more often than not their games are great as well with some innovation via touch screen. What concerns me is when you have small companies and then you have people that pirate their games. This does nothing but hurt everyone as those guys aren't getting paid meaning their apps don't sell the way they should which means less fund for further development. It's a downward spiral. A company like EA can take the financial hit of piracy. Two guys trying to keep the lights on may not be able to stay in business because a large chunk of jailbroken iphone are running their stolen software. As far as price goes it's really a double edged sword. While I enjoy the occasional two dollar potato chip game (i.e. I'm currently in LOVE with OMG! Pirates) you typically can only get so much production value out of a game that sells for less money than a can of redbull. So while we I enjoy the cheap prices we end up with a VAST majority of iphone game being cheap trash. Hell, the main reason I come to Touch Arcade is so I can wade through all the crap to find a single rare gem of a game. Personally, I'd like to see games by larger companies with higher production values. I see the potential on the iDevices for this to be really amazing. Problem is, and this is where the double edged sword comes in, there are a BUNCH of cheap bums that have hundreds to spend on a iphone/touch but scoff at paying 10, 15, 20 dollars for a GOOD game. If Blizzard made Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft 3 for the iPhone with custom controls, full campaign and wifi multiplayer I'd be all over it. And I'd be more than willing to spend 20 bucks on it. But people would flip out and scream bloody murder about how they'd never spend that much. Not realizing that it costs money to make these games and these companies don't exist as a charity, they're trying to make a profit. That's personally the problem I see with the iPhone as a successful portable gaming device: Piracy and everyone expecting a fully featured game for 99 cents.
Still shouldn't be bitching about it. If you're poor, living in a developing country, and are bitching about $5 apps, I still cut you no slack. However much money was spent on the iphone, could very likely have been better spent.
So, about the devs making more money if they sell it for $.99 because they are getting more volume. A simple comparison (at least in the Canadian App store) between the top 25 paid apps and the top 25 grossing apps can show the info quite clearly. It is pretty obvious when you: a) do not see any of the top $.99 apps in the top grossing apps and b) when almost all of the top grossing apps are over $4.99 that seems to show me that the people who are making the real money off the apps are actually charging more for them, instead of making more money off selling more of the cheaper apps. I can totally understand not wanting to spend more than $.99 on an app if you are downloading several/day or even /week. However, there should be no complaining over quality. I mean, if you go to a dollar store and the thing you bought there either a) doesn't work, or b) breaks within two days or c) really freakin sucks then you're not surprised. If you want quality then you have to be willing to pay for it.
Exactly. Currently the situation is the customers are expecting too much but they forget that they have only paid $0.99. As everybody knows that when you pay $50, you get a $50 game, and you pay $1, then you get $1 game. Expecting paying $1 but have the same quality as $50 game is unfair. However, no matter how much we have explained, the fact is under our nose. So a solution is required to be discovered to resolve the problem.
