Despite his most recent iOS game Casey's Contraptions being sold at a flat $2.99, currently without in-app purchases, Noel Llopis, from Snappy Touch, gave a talk at Evolve called 'One price does not fit all'.

"We're in a digital environment, but we're still pricing games as if they were manufactured products," he argued.

Using the term Flexible Pricing, rather than free-to-play, Llopis said you have to let people pay what they want to pay you for your content.

"There are cases of people spending tens of thousands of dollars on in-game consumables on iOS," Llopis said.

From free to lots of dollars

Building up his case with an iterative argument mapping cost, consumer reach and profit, "Making your game available for free easily means you'll have 20 times more downloads than charging $1 for it," Llopis said.

Of course, most players won't spend money, but they are useful for word of mouth marketing. And even those people - typically around 2 percent - who do spend money are heavily segmented.

"80 - 90 percent of your profits from freemium games come from 0.5 percent of users," Llopis revealed. "You have to get your head around this model."

Indeed, taking the example of his two games - one free with IAP and one paid without IAP, Llopis says that despite being released two years ago, Flower Garden is currently making four times as much money as Casey Contraptions.

“You have to abandon fixed priced games now,” Llopis concluded.

The slides from the talk will be available via GamesFromWithin