Any developers want to share their thoughts on the lower price ranges? I'm getting info all over, but not many people can adequately explain they they're choosing $2.99 over $3.99 over $4.99.
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iPhone Developers: What are your prices?
- Thread starter Greencardman
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Sure.
To me there are two pricing models for applications that are not for free.
1) Price based on difficulty of development/amount of time to develop.
2) Price based on estimated demand (seems shady to me.)
I choose method 1 if it is an application that is to be sold. As I write the specification and perform the necessary R&D, I estimate the amount of total time it will take to develop and QA the application. I then multiply by a modest hourly rate and factor in a small percentage for support (maybe 3-5%.) Once I get that number, I take a wild guess at what the install base would be in 3 - 6 months. I divide the total amount by install base and get the approximate price. Then I gut feel it a little... if it feels high and the application is worth it, I will choose to eat some of the cost. If it is too high and not a very compelling application, I will give the source code from the R&D effort to someone else who may be able to do it better/cheaper (we all have our strengths.)
Good point.
I am not so much forgetting them as ignoring them though.
My rant was just about me as a (long-time) consumer of apps and what I personally would be prepared to pay for a diverting game or a helper app etc.
I still think whomever said 50 or 100 bucks is dreaming. Mostly developers should be thinking somewhere between five bucks and free IMO. Commodity pricing, baby.
I would pay 20 for something like a better email app than Apple's built in one, or "mobile office" or something of that nature. But it would have to be a "best of class" product, not just some wonky hack.
Here's a way to think of it that makes sense to me...
If I (now) think that paying 25 bucks for a music CD is "too much" and sometimes even balk at iTunes prices when they go over ten bucks, why would I pay even more for an application for my phone, from "some guy" that I am not even sure works?
I believe my thinking about prices is actually quite "mainstream."
You said earlier that you wouldn't pay as much for an iPhone app because it couldn't be as robust as a desktop app. That's debatable, and I certainly hope you're wrong. I expect to see some very helpful and complex iPhone apps. In fact, I expect apps that wouldn't even be possible on the desktop. Multi-touch, location awareness, and extreme portability will (or, I hope they will) produce apps that will make desktop-only developers go, "damn, I wish we could do that in our app!"
But now you seem to be saying that the price of software should be comparable to a CD, and you're doubting the quality of small-developer products. This, again, has nothing to do with iPhone. Have you ever paid $50 or more for a Mac app from a small developer? I certainly have, as have many, many people. Mac developers make a living, after all.
bitslap47, what if your estimate comes out low, but your gut tells you its a good app? ie., it solves a great problem but it took an hour to build. Would you raise the price? Alternatively, would you raise a price of a later app if some of the former apps were not performing and so hadn't given you back the modest hourly rate you were looking for?
Having multiple apps makes me consider you lucky For entrepreneurs, pricing is a headache, and for a person who has spent months developing one app, it probably feels like the most important thing in the world, because it can mean the difference between profitability or loss, popularity, or not. They have all their eggs in one basket, and its hard.
Which incidentally, is why I'm gathering this info. Thanks for sharing your pricing strategies. I look forward to checking out some of your apps.
Having multiple apps makes me consider you lucky
For entrepreneurs, pricing is a headache, and for a person who has spent months developing one app, it probably feels like the most important thing in the world, because it can mean the difference between profitability or loss, popularity, or not. They have all their eggs in one basket, and its hard. Which incidentally, is why I'm gathering this info. Thanks for sharing your pricing strategies. I look forward to checking out some of your apps.
Virgil-TB2, would you pay more for a polished, professionally done game as opposed to a "casual" game? I hate to make statements like that, since a casual game can be just as fun as a game from a major studio, but I don't know how else to put it. People have been comparing the iPhone's hardware to the Playstation Portable, and those games seem to retail for $39.99 for new, major releases. Would you pay that much?
Im with Virgil, I can't see any market for an app priced at $50 or $100. We only need to look at other mobile platforms as an example. WinMo applications, if not free rarely go over $30 in my experience. BlackBerry comes in about the same. These are platforms with a distinct connection with enterprise customers, which is not so with the iPhone.
Epocrates charges over $200 for their mobile applications:
http://www.epocrates.com/programs/pdamd_bundles.html
Yes, but the PSP is sold, marketed, and designed as a portable gaming system. Not only that, but people tend to pay more for a tangible game than they do for an over-the-air download. It's just not going to happen. People aren't going to pay $40 for a game like its a PSP, $50 for an application like its a mobile computer, or $100 for anything. The iPhone can't be everything, and shouldn't be treated like such.
I have a mental delineation between consumer and professional and enterprise apps. Epocrates is most definitely a very, very specialized application - we're not talking a Microsoft Word editor or something with broader commercial possibilities, we're talking a reference system for medical specialists - the high price is both understandable and appropriate. For the great majority of apps, though, I see $30 being the general ceiling.
I'd like to ask a question about the requirement to save application state if a call comes in or the user flips to a different task.
Will your games save state, or restart from scratch each time? Is this need slowing down your programming at all?
Thanks for any insight!
I don't see why a $20 app has to be so amazing. For example, Xbox Live Arcade just got a downloadable game (Penny Arcade's On the Rain Slick Precipace of Darkness, Episode 1), $20, that's well worth it, and tons of people are paying that much for it. If that same exact game were on iPhone, why should it be any cheaper? Or Spore, they said they ported the entire PC version of the game to iPhone, I bet that'd go for at least $40 if it was truly the entire game.
Im pretty sure Apple stated that none of the "app store" programs could run in the background. Im not a developer, so I couldn't answer your other question.
He's not talking about that.
He's saying that since the game would have to quit to answer a phone call, will the game be able to automatically save its state, so you can hop right back in after the call, etc?
Yes. The app will get a message that it needs to save and quit. Hence the save.
DreamPod, I think you've hit the nail on the head right there: games are notoriously difficult to price. A game that takes five hours to develop can be just as much fun as one that takes months to develop. Obviously, the one that takes months will need to be priced to at least cover costs, while the one that took hours could be priced lower. Which is where pricing strategies come in. One developer might say "My game is just as much fun as a $20 one, so I'll price it at that" a sort of value to the consumer model, while another might say "My game only took 5 hours to build, so I'll price it to reflect a good wage for those 5 hours assuming I sell X copies." A sort of development time/cost model. Each one has its pros and cons. Each one could make it more or less expensive (ie. you put in a ton of work, but only end up with a mediocre game, which do you choose?). For the moment, I'd love to hear what people developing what are commonly called "casual" games are thinking about pricing, as I see this as the area most independent game developers would be interested in.
Because the iPhone is a phone, and the 360 is a gaming console. No matter the quality, people do not buy phones with the interest of paying $40 for a game, unlike people who are buying 360, PS3s, and Wiis.
For example, on the EA games mobile site now, you can buy games for phones like the AT&T Tilt for a max of $9.99. You think an iPhone game would sell for $40?
The developers have to think of their audience here. There is no market for $40-$50 games on a mobile phone, no matter how awesome. (Most) People don't buy their phone with the mindset of paying $40 for applications and games. The most popular apps will no doubt be in the $6 range, a price many people are willing to pay.
All the countries in the world should connect to the same AppStore (maybe different mirrors to keep the speed up), because developers localize themselves, as opposed to the iTunes store where Apple localizes themselves. Therefore, I couldn't imagine each country having their own store, as some countries might have like three applications and that's it.
I'm also guessing that's why it's 30%? because of the fact that they might maintain multiple servers around the world to keep the speed?
Then again, I might be wrong.
PopCap's Bejewled 2 can be fully ported over to the iPhone. I don't think they'll be charging less than the current $19.95 for the iPhone. Now Spore...that's different as we can actually see it having some things cut. Final Draft can almost all be ported as well too (actually it can, but if they decided to make one for the iPhone I'm sure some thing's won't be there)...and last I checked, it was $229. $229 --> < $50 would mean serious cut, which if you're looking at Final Draft, doesn't have to be cut.
The 30% royalty?
A $3 app could take up just as much space (and probably a lot more download bandwidth) than a $100 app. So by the bogus Apple server explanation, they should be charged the same for storage and downloading. If one's charged a $1 for storage, so should the other.
But if both were downloaded a million times, Apple gets $30 million to "host" the more expensive app. That would pay for a helluva lot of private server space. It's also a HUGE incentive to figure out ways to sell without Apple getting a cut.
I'm pretty sure the 30% is just to handle the upkeep for the store, vetting apps, processing credit cards, customer service, and like you said, servers and storage, etc. Of course, free apps require resources for that stuff too, so really Apple is somewhat taxing the paid apps to pay for hosting the free apps. Its really not a bad deal considering what goes into it. Of course, if you can make a different model work, like an ad supported app, you can cut out Apple and get the services for free. But the lower your price or volume of sales, the better deal you get.
True. I'm also guessing that the 30% is so that they can upkeep the free apps? I'm sure that the amount of free applications will be vast in number.
I didn't mean the specific application. The 30% doesn't necessarily mean that that money goes to just that one app's upkeep. I'm sure it's all going to one big pool where they use for multiple servers for hosting all the apps (as well as the free ones).
And, are those games the exact same quality you'd find on a home console, a PSP or a DS? No, they are very clearly cheap cell-phone games, which is why they are so cheap. They are developed with a very low budget and designed to work on the lowest-common-denominator of cell phones so they can sell to the most different phones as possible. The device you are playing a game on should not set the price, but the quality of the game, and the iPhone should be getting a lot more high quality games than normal cell phones.
Since people have sent you stuff on pricing, has any of them commented on say an app that lets you customize your iPhone? new skins etc?
man I can't wait for the 9th,,,,
man I can't wait for the 9th,,,,
iPhone apps created using the SDK are standalone, independent, sandboxed apps. They can interact with the rest of the iPhone OS only through a small set of interfaces (the Contact Picker, for instance).
Official apps created using the SDK (and available in the App Store) can NOT perform any system modification such as skinning, changing the home screen, modifying other apps, installing hacks, system tweaks, etc.