Everyone has an opinion concerning what Apple should do to improve discovery of games on the App Store.
It's especially the case with studios that want to make high quality games which will only make back their development costs if they're sold at a multiple of the lowest 99c price.
For example, US outfit Tiger Style spent eight months setting up and working on its debut Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor ($2.99), which is currently at #63 in the US Top 100.
Despite this initial success, David Kalina, who's previously worked on games such as Thief and Deus Ex, reckons the App Store is a scary place to operate in.
"If your desire is to make a premium gaming experience that will require an investment involving more than a single person and/or a few months' work, it's going to be very difficult to recoup costs or even think about profitability," he explains, in an interview on PocketGamer.biz about the setting up of Tiger Style, which he co-founded with designer of the Thief series of games, Randy Smith.
One way to change the situation, he points out, would be to tweak the way the chart works.
Currently it's based on the number of downloads over a certain period. (Apple doesn't say exactly what, but it's assumed to be somewhere between 24 - 48 hours.)
"If Apple wants the quality of the offerings on its devices to increase, it needs to find a way to encourage greater investments and greater risks," Kalina argues.
"My personal opinion is that ranking games by revenue (instead of by unit sales) would help more expensive apps gain greater visibility on the ever-important best selling charts."
If this was the case, Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor would be worth three downloads of a game such as Minigore (99c).
Top rated games such as Real Racing would gain a 10-fold increase thanks to their $9.99 price point.
News
Contributing Editor
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.
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