Android

[gilesgoat]

It's the news item that the longer blog post was referring to, though it does not have much more information. Here's a new, longer, report on the same topic: Making mobile games with a 60 percent piracy rate: the 'Dead Trigger' experience

Re again the 'complex and subtle reasons'. Like what? It's not price: apps costing as little as 99¢ suffer as much piracy. It's not convenience: it couldn't be easier to buy an app. Developers can't make apps cheaper or easier to obtain to combat piracy.

I still would say anyway that "a big part of the fault in all this" is exactly in those that allowed it to happen, so Google and Apple in the first place to allow such market policies to be possible.

"If you allow a thing to happen is going to happen, if you don't want it to happen you have to make it impossible to happen".

Let's face it, they mostly tought at "but we are going to make money anyway", now maybe they'll start to realise better that "actually maybe it wasn't the best thing to do".

I think that the whole concept of "ultra low pricing, mega mass marketing" ultimately will collapse, it will turn out not to work as expected nor to be a real sustaineable regime.

I think that on a global scale "if things would cost more and there would be less of them around" ultimately "everyone would have more money to spend in things even if in quantity there would be less transactions".

Reality is "99p does not make anyone richer" , you don't become rich because things are now cheaper, there's only so much cheaper stuff can go and even if it's free you are still not richer at all, it's a temporary illusion.

You are not richer because you don't have "the power", "the power" belongs to those making the stuff cheaper or free not to you, you are only a user of what it's been given you in reality you are even more enslaved by the system.

Time to wear tinfoil hats and listen to crazy Jones

[adam]

the low pricing was apples idea to an extent, and is probably designed to sell more iphones

[gilesgoat]

Semi-related, found by accident this morning, a clear case where you look at that and then you think "I did not understand anything about life, I am in the wrong business" ..

She claims "she knows the sheperds one by one" ..

We have such a mountain of wool and we can say "we know the sheep one by one", we should make those and sell those instead :

http://donne.it.msn.com/leiweb/follie-p ... a#image=14

It's a foot stoll made with a few pieces of wood and I think that has to be Jacob's sheep wool.

... then look at the price ...

Now that's business if they really manage to sell those thingies

[edit] - in case the link does not work is "Foot-stool Drenthe Heath Sheep created by Beatrice Waanders".

[pogo]

The 99¢ pricing is a consequence of the digital age we live in. Like music where you can no longer make customers pay $5 for a single, $10 for an album, they now have to be able to buy individual songs for 99¢. The reason is there's no longer a physical medium putting a floor under prices. When it costs $1 or more to manufacture, package and distribute content you need to sell it at much more to pay for the content, market it and make a profit.

As with music so with apps; there's no practical reason why they have to cost more than 99¢. It's also worth asking what would happen if Apple set a minimum price of $10, say. First it would drive many developers away, unable to compete at that price level. It might even drive Apple to introduce tighter quality controls, like on consoles, limiting numbers even more.

Second we would see much more piracy, as doing so to save $10/$20/$30 is much more attractive than doing so to save $1/$2/$3. One of the strengths of iOS is that piracy and jailbreaking, although it happens, is at much lower levels than other platforms. I think it would be much worse if apps were much more expensive.

(Why no cheaper than 99¢? There are still costs associated with delivering the good, in particular transaction and billing costs for e.g. charging a credit card. And there's probably little point going any cheaper to boost sales; if someone won't pay 99¢ for something they won't pay anything)

[Harlequin]

(Why no cheaper than 99¢? There are still costs associated with delivering the good, in particular transaction and billing costs for e.g. charging a credit card. And there's probably little point going any cheaper to boost sales; if someone won't pay 99¢ for something they won't pay anything)

There are far more costs involved, such as food, utilities and mortgages for those trying to survive whilst developing the software.

[pogo]

(Why no cheaper than 99¢? There are still costs associated with delivering the good, in particular transaction and billing costs for e.g. charging a credit card. And there's probably little point going any cheaper to boost sales; if someone won't pay 99¢ for something they won't pay anything)

There are far more costs involved, such as food, utilities and mortgages for those trying to survive whilst developing the software.

It's the cost of delivering each sale that's the lower bound on the price, as well as a fuzzier minimum due to users being price-insensitive to such low prices. The market doesn't care about how much it costs to make it (and there are always those with lower costs/more efficient methods able to make something for less).

[Darkflame]

Re again the 'complex and subtle reasons'. Like what? It's not price: apps costing as little as 99¢ suffer as much piracy. It's not convenience: it couldn't be easier to buy an app

Well, it is easier to download a free app (add-based) then pay for one, marginally, but still so.

Then again, I have never felt the need to buy anything on my phone - mobile games don't interest me, and the utilities all tend to be free or ad-paid for. My credit card details have never even got onto the phone - maybe this is the norm?
Or maybe not.
I am not saying I know why - I just don't think the majority of Android users are pirating. I sure as hell know my parents arnt.

I think that the whole concept of "ultra low pricing, mega mass marketing" ultimately will collapse, it will turn out not to work as expected nor to be a real sustaineable regime.

+1
The only way ultra-cheap works is if you can sale to everyone. I think people are too broadly different for that too work for long.

Such bundles often show Linux users contribute more than other platforms, but that does not make Linux a good platform to develop for.

Thats due to lower user base - its not easier to pirate on Linux then it is Windows.
Thats even assuming that people paying more for Indies would pay more also for big-brand IPs. Probably not - if Linux games were actually sold for more then Windows, that would only piss people off.

All the bundles show is it isnt a straightforward as "people dont want to pay!".

And the PC software industry is a fraction the size it once was: it doesn't seem that long ago that PC games were as important as console games.

Many factors, not just piracy.
Id say mostly its lost its big graphical advantage, its controls suck for a lot of genre's, and its hugely inconvenient For developers PCs also need a lot more testing.

[pogo]

Re again the 'complex and subtle reasons'. Like what? It's not price: apps costing as little as 99¢ suffer as much piracy. It's not convenience: it couldn't be easier to buy an app

Well, it is easier to download a free app (add-based) then pay for one, marginally, but still so.

Bzzt. No. I was asking for reasons why piracy is preferred to buying an app.

I am not saying I know why - I just don't think the majority of Android users are pirating. I sure as hell know my parents arnt.

OK, so there are no other reasons that you know of.

And the PC software industry is a fraction the size it once was: it doesn't seem that long ago that PC games were as important as console games.

Many factors, not just piracy.
Id say mostly its lost its big graphical advantage, its controls suck for a lot of genre's, and its hugely inconvenient For developers PCs also need a lot more testing.

It's got much, much easier to make PC games: hardware is much more standardised, APIs are maturer and more stable, and middleware exists now to take care of much of the nasty details of supporting different platforms. The graphical advantage comes and goes: when they come out consoles catch up for a short time but then PCs pull ahead again. Especially this generation which has lasted much longer than the usual five years. It should be easier and cheaper than ever to make PC games which should easily outclass the consoles. But the market no longer exists.

[Harlequin]

All of the games I buy are on the PC, and I buy quite a few.

But the market no longer exists.

I wonder where all these PC games (both cheap and AAA) are coming from, then.

[disciple]

As for your suspicions of 'complex and subtle reasons', the number one reason is not-at-all subtle piracy, as developers have found out time and time again: 'Dead Trigger' now free on Android due to 'unbelievably high' piracy rate.

The adage, a pirated copy does not equate to a lost sale seems relevant here.

I'm not sure that if there were no piracy on Android then you'd suddenly get a huge increase in sales.

People pirate because they can and because it's easy, not necessarily because they desperately want app x and don't want to pay.

My pattern seems to be get the ad funded app, use that, if it's something I genuinely found useful then I'll buy the paid version (if it's reasonably priced), otherwise skip it.

However if there wasn't a free version in the first place I would have used an alternative app, there's a huge amount of free choice on Android.

Compare and contrast the iPhone thread and the Android sheepies thread, there doesn't seem to be the buzz around Android gaming as there is around IOS.

I know a load of Android users and none of them give a monkey's beyond BBC News reader, Gmail, Twitter, other free commodity type apps and a bit of web browsing on the lavvy.

[pogo]

'no longer exists' was a bit harsh. But it's getting there:



Ten or more years ago it was just another platform, maybe a worse one than the PS2, a better one than the Xbox (say). Now though it's only a small fraction of any console. And that's only up to the release of the iPhone, since which the consoles have been in decline. PC games have probably done even worse since then, though it's difficult to know as they're no longer news like consoles + phones. No-one's reporting companies getting out of making PC games as except for a few holdouts it happened a few years ago.

[Harlequin]

No-one's reporting companies getting out of making PC games as except for a few holdouts it happened a few years ago.

Really? Almost every single company producing Xbox 360 games that interest me also produces PC versions. I can count those that I know have dropped out on one hand.

[disciple]

Just been reading that a credit card number is required before you can use your new iPhone, is that correct?

For example : http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 935AAI7KIX

It's one barrier to making a sale that's down from day 1 if true.

[Kelloggs]

We've been bashing our heads against this a bit in work, as well; there exists an Apple document which suggests otherwise. Briefly: create an Apple ID in App Store (on whatever platform you can do so on) by trying to buy a Free app. Your payment type choice will then include "None"...

[disciple]

Yeah seen mention of that, I've also seen people (possibly incorrectly) moaning about said Apple support document, saying the "None" option does not actually exist. Either way it seems you have to use a bit of a workaround to avoid putting a credit card number in.

I'm thinking that it may be the case that most, if not nearly all, IOS users already have their credit card number in there, it being a requirement of participating in the Apple experience.

Or at least the percentage of IOS users with their device already set up for seamless purchasing is dwarfing that on Android.