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iOS Users Overwhelmingly Prefer Free Games With Advertisements to Paid Titles
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It wouldn't be this way if Apple allowed free trials. Even for $1, people don't like to gamble on getting a piece of crap.
Just wanted to note that I agree 100% with everything you wrote except for this opening statement. There are major problems with the survey, and "reality" - meaning the numbers which we have access to - doesn't tell us one way or another. More than just a small sample size, this was a survey of users who were actively using games using the ad company's product. The whitepaper doesn't go into the methodology at all, which means it is likely that the opportunity to respond to this survey happened after a positive response to some other ad, etc. This is a cherry-picked survey sample, and so tells us absolutely nothing.
I'd love to see an actual survey on this. As in, a random sampling of app store users across the board, with demographic balancing, etc. Not gonna happen, though.
Apologies. You misunderstood my hyperbolic attempt at agreeing with you. My only point of contention is you feel IAP and DLC are different. I don't. In Forza for example, DLC can be taken in one large chuck (a car pack) or you can buy single car from a car pack. Some race challenges require a certain car and sometime that car can't be purchased singularly... gotta buy the pack. Additionally buying DLC only allows you the ability to purchase the car with in game credits or cash. So again I agree with you and just poorly communicated my attempt at humor. Swing and a miss?
No, it is claiming that people prefer to pay for their apps with ads, as the survey says multiple times:
This isn't about "do you want something free?". This is about "Do you want to pay for this by watching ads, or do you want to pay for this with cash?"
I'd assert that the vast majority of people downloading free apps in the app store are fully intending to get a "free" app, one that they can enjoy without ads, without in-app purchases, and without up-front purchase. I can say this with some conviction because I am one of those people; I will certainly download and play the first bit of a free app. Apps which have gotten past the first ad display or first in-app-purchase hurdle have to be extraordinary (and, yes, of those I would strongly prefer an ad over never-ending stream of in-app purchases, but only because experience shows that games relying on in-app purchases end up costing hundreds of dollars to play through).
Again, downloads != approval or a vote in favor of the freemium model(s). Freemium apps will have more downloads because downloads are free.
I hate adverts in games, but I understand that many aren't bothered by them. Being free obviously significantly increases the reach of an app as well.
What I don't understand is why each app that has adverts there isn't an automatic IAP option to pay $1 to turn them off. I don't know the specifics, but surely $1 from 1 user is worth more than 1 user viewing ads? I have no doubt most users would continue with it ad-supported, but there is a decent sized minority that would happily pay the $1 for a decent time-wasting game.
What I don't understand is why each app that has adverts there isn't an automatic IAP option to pay $1 to turn them off. I don't know the specifics, but surely $1 from 1 user is worth more than 1 user viewing ads? I have no doubt most users would continue with it ad-supported, but there is a decent sized minority that would happily pay the $1 for a decent time-wasting game.
I think the reason the free charts are so much higher is because of kids who don't have the option to pay for content. Teenagers would almost certainly prefer to buy apps than have to put up with ads, but they'd rather put up with ads than have to ask their parents to make the purchase.
This is 100% a generational difference. My time is valuable to me, and I'm willing to pay to avoid the irritation of advertisements. When I was 12, my options were somewhat more limited.
I think the interpretation of this artifact as "people prefer ad supported games" is a distortion. Ad supported games have fewer barriers to the market is more accurate. I suspect the question being answered is "do you prefer games you can download over games that you can't" rather than "do you prefer ad supported games over paid games".
I knew bad things could happen once EA purchased Firemint.
I'm more than willing to fully pay upfront for a proven, quality franchise like RR, but I won't be strung along or nickel and dimed, so no RR3 for me.
There are just some types of games that don't lend themselves to the freemium or IAP model.
Same with the console racing games, which lean too heavily toward paid car collection exercises for my taste.
I realize that's how the game business works now, but I can so no thanks.
But it took research to convince me that people so easily fall into these "fake free" games, ending up paying 100x the money for a paid game...
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The good old days when I can just go to iapp****s.com, download and replace a file in the game and boom 258,896,382,345 gems and coins... is also gone when the site was taken down
Recent IAP games invested a lot in their server that all transactions are done there like a financial transaction, i.e. local hacks don't easily work anymore. The game simply doesn't work when there is no internet connection.
Back to the topic, RR3 is a really good game if the IAP crap is gone.
Which is why AAA gaming in mobile won't take off anytime. Why pay more for more when you can pay less for less.
Yep. I'm not going to say their findings are necessarily wrong or misleading, but follow the money. You always have to take research where a certain result benefits the people funding the research with a grain of salt, if not outright skepticism. As always with these sorts of things, how the questions are asked can skew the results any way the people issuing the research want.
That said, they have an interesting ad model. Watch an ad and get items that players can use in the game. That's different than just "we're going to shove an ad in your face whenever and wherever we want".
Doesn't surprise me a bit - people stretch themselves to the limit buying hipster Apple and then go cheap on the add-ons.
All games are time wasters, that's the very definition of a game, regardless of how advanced and deep it is, it's genre or it's platform.
Obviously people on here, and at sites like touch arcade, are in a tiny minority as compared to the market as a whole. I think all of us that are here can agree that we as a small demographic, would like to pay a one time up front fee for games and be able to play them outright afterwards.
Here's the thing - how many of us play Candy Crush? Exactly...
