Those complaining about high initial iPad prices, remember back to the App Store launch when every pathetic game at the time was selling well for $4.99-$9.99. While the premium price point will seem to stay at $14.99, most games will drop their prices after staying high for the launch rush.
Well put, Hodapp & robotsvswizards. If we wanted to earn money, we wouldn't be making iPhone games. Also completely with you on the not-sleeping for the past week.
Agreed. If you guys had been around for the launch of the App Store, you would have seen that when iPhone games first launched they were considerably more expensive than they are today (For example, I paid $10 for Pac-Man, and most of the other "name-brand" games were that price as well). Over time the App Store community brought down the economy of the app store to where it is today (aka, bitching about app prices if they are anything above .99). I see no reason why the iPad App Store should not go through a similar cycle. Dev's are charging more money in an attempt to test the waters and see how the buyers respond. Give it a little time and the prices will come down.
I totally agree! But there is no such option available for dev right now. Hopefully Apple will introduce such pricing option for dev soon.
I am a Dev, and have 6 games hitting the app store, 3 are approved now (Tumble Blocks HD, Picture Hunter HD and Red Block Remover 2 HD) Only Red Block Remover 2 HD is a redo of my iphone version. All my others are Ipad only games. Wen i priced them i prices on work and cost put into the games. Not interested in taking advantage of the rush. I know I will also be waiting for the 10.00 games to drop there prices before i buy them. cheers
I'm also a dev, and despite 3 of my 4 games having the "HD" tag to their name, none of my games are 100% EXACTLY like their iPhone versions. Cubesplosions HD has a LOT more cubes on screen, for example(and is the cheapest of my iPad games having the same price as the iPhone version). Escape From Zombie City: Infection HD has a brand new gameplay mode slapped onto it. Nebula Pinball HD has more bumpers and they are in an, overall, different placement. And then there is RavenHawk: Zero Mission, which was made from the ground up for the iPad the night before the final deadline for the grand opening. That one is my most expensive, priced at $4 cause I had put a lot of work into it in just mere hours. But I agree that I'll wait for the more expensive games to drop in price before getting them.
The "HD" on the end of the ipad games names make me laugh, they aren't even HD quality (most are just the same iphone game with hardly any improvements) yet they still decide to add the "HD" name to make buyers think they are. After looking through the various Ipad games the ONLY one I think looks any good is We Rule and guess what, its FREE! that game has been totally re done for the ipad and it really shows. Most of the other games seem to be quick cheap releases priced at such high prices noone will even look twice and I will say now that the ipad will have VERY high piracy if these prices remain high like that, and you thought piracy on iphone/touch was bad lol. I mean seriously, (example) Real Racing HD for £10 when its only £1.50 on the iphone lol The fact is this, a lot of devlopers are rushing to make money on the ipad forgetting about the iphone/touch which has almost 80 million sales between them, ipad will be lucky to have 5 million sales in the next few months, less than 20% of those ipad owners will do any gaming on them, that is a very small market to sell overpriced games too! And also, as most sites have stated, the ipad appstore will crash within a month or two just like the iphone/touch store did where all the prices drop like a brick as they are too high at the moment, it will end up costing too much to make games for ipad on the return most devlopers get back in profits. Mark my words, two months from now and 90% of the content for ipad will be the same price as the iphone/touch content and also most developers will go back to iphone/touch as this is where the majority of profits will be made. And sorry to put a downer on things!
the only thing i do not get is why games are being re-released in ipad form and not just updated to be compatible with the ipad. that way, previous owners will not have to spend more on the same games.
Aside from the obvious reason (they want you to buy the game again), I think the problem comes from a lot of iPhone games being 2D. Depending on how you did your graphics (for example, if you used pixel art), upscaling them to fit the larger screen is not just a matter of resizing the images in Photoshop. Also, if you coded your game in terms of pixels, assumig the iPhone/iPad default screen size, you may have to rework a good chunk of your game logic to make it compatible. It may be a bit of poor planning on the side of developers, but part of the appeal of making games for the iPhone is the fairly constant hardware. Not having to worry much about hardware capabilities is very important for indie developers especially. 3D games should not have many problems to be ported. 3D Objects adapt to different screen sizes without any problem. You may need to rework some textures though. So, some devs may be trying to just make a quick buck, but for a lot of them doing an iPad port actually means work enough to require charging for the new version. How much you decide to charge is another matter... We opted for just continuing our development schedule for iPhone/iPode touch and will probably release new games targeting the iPad a bit later. To us, it just didn't make sense to compete with the hundreds of games (and apps) coming out on launch.
Thanks ^ for the explanation. Yeah alot of us non-developers think that it's just a simple upscaling with basically a simple program that enhances all graphics in 1-2 hours. I know it doesn't work that way. However, most would agree that upscaling a completed game is alot easier than coming up with a brand new game, so hence the complaint about prices. So in the mean time, I would just sit out on iPad game purchases until the price comes down a little. For $9.99, I would much rather buy Pages or Numbers or subscribe to some magazines on Zinio than buy Real Racing or Plants v Zombies.
