Dinner Dash is a very popular game and its made its way to your iPhone! First I congratulate the developers on getting the game onto the platform and I look forward to what they may have coming up the in the future. However, that’s where the joy is going to end for me and by the looks of the initial reviews – that’s where it is ending for a lot of people.
Why you ask? Price … Price yet again. Over and over I’ve seen what could be killer games come into the AppStore and over and over I (and many) have looked the other way because the prices are way too high. Now, understand I AM NOT saying that the AppStore needs some kind of fixed pricing model, and I fully respect that developers can and should set their own prices, however too many developers are coming from Windows Mobile, PC, OS X or other platforms and have completely missed the fact that they are entering the iTunes pricing model.
What does that mean? Click on to find out –
That (to me) means that while you may be able to charge $49.99 for an XBOX 360 game, and you may be able to charge $19.99 for a game on the Nintendo DS – iTunes is a low priced environment. Its like Wal-Mart for digital content. Yes, Amazon digital downloads are sometimes cheaper … but you get my point. iTunes has been built on a model of low priced digital downloads. People go on iTunes and they expect to pay $0.99 for a song. Heck, $1.29 for non-DRM was too much to ask for most and Apple ended up dropping the price down to $0.99 for those!
If I had to guess (I haven’t looked at the numbers) Apple most likely has a hard time selling movies because the prices for those are too high as well. I mean seriously – for $14.99 I can buy a movie on DVD and “back it up” to whatever format I want. iTunes I get the download and that’s it. You delete it by accident – and you’re buying it again. But there in lies my point – if you charge too much in this environment your sales may be decent, but they aren’t going to be sensational.
There really is turning out to be what I would call a sweet spot for games and that’s the $2.99 – $6.99 price range. $2.99 is sort of like a no-brainer purchase. The game looks like it could be fun, is getting good reviews … I’ll click “buy” without a lot of extra thought. Why? Well because its not going to break the bank and if it sucks then I don’t feel bad because the heartburn is no worse than the 2 Taco Bell burritos and a soda I skipped out on for it. $6.99 is more of a multiple hour decision type of game. For $6.99 I’m missing out on ice cream with my daughter … so the game needs to be good and have decent replay value. If it turns out to suck then it hurts a bit more and I’ve then wasted what could have been good times at Baskin Robins.
Alright – I’ve rambled on long enough on this I think. Reality is that when you develop a game and you think you can get away with charging $9.99 for it – take a look at your competition and the demographics. At $10 you’re competing against the likes of Sega’s SMB and Pangea’s Enigmo. You’re competing against top notch games with killer graphics and tons of replay-ability. Most importantly, at $10 you’re cutting out a huge percentage of buyers. Many simply can’t or won’t justify $10 for a game on their phone but those same people will happily drop $2.99 without a second thought. So I ask you this – With an estimated 14 million iPhones to be sold by the end of the year … are you sure as a developer you want to price your games at the highest price point and get the lowest number of sales? I personally think millions of sales vs. thousands of sales would be more inviting.
Oh … and please don’t try to sell me a game for $10 when I can play it for free on my laptop. I’ll pay a couple bucks for the convenience though.
P.S. – My apologies to PlayFirst. You just happened to be the folks who set me in motion on this. I’m sure the game is excellent. But at that price I doubt I’ll ever find out as there’s just too many other proven games in that price range.
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