A friend of mine pointed me to this blog post on App Store pricing:

• On App Store Pricing (blog.instapaper.com) – I recommend reading the article and the two other articles that are linked to from the main page. They’re all extremely worthwhile reads.

The authors of the various articles are arguing that the pricing structure for apps in iTunes needs to change. The argument is that developers pricing everything at $0.99 is unsustainable and that it will lead to the App Store being filled with abandonware and junk.

The post is particularly interesting to me as I’ve recently started seriously thinking about what I’ll end up charging for my game. I’m sure this is something every iPhone developer struggles with. My game will be competing with games written by people in their spare time who hope their game sells well, but whose livelihood isn’t dependent on it, so they sell their game for $0.99. However, this is my job. If I don’t make any money off this game, I don’t get paid for the 6 months of work I’ll have put into it.

I’m not trying to complain; I have absolutely loved working on this game. It’s been a blast working for myself and creating a game from scratch with a tiny team. The experience alone has been worth it. That being said, if I can’t make a living doing this, then at some point I’ll have to find a salaried job again…and I really want to be able to make a living doing this. So I struggle with trying to find a balance between how much work went into the game, how much I think it’s worth, and how much I think people will pay for it. It’s tough…

Some of these answers may become more clear to me once I’ve released a game and I’ve been able to track the sales numbers. I’ll have data that I can start to draw some conclusions from. However, for now, I’m kind of working blind; gleaning whatever information I can from other developers’ sales blog posts.

On a more holiday-related note, after Wednesday I will probably not be posting for at least a few days as we head to my wife’s home town and then mine for Christmas. So if you celebrate something this time of year: Happy Holidays! If not, then have a great rest of December!

Owen

This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Business, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.