As a market matures, it becomes clearer which business models actually work.

And even in a market moving as fast as smartphone gaming, there have been several trends; from the $5 early months on the Apple App Store in 2008, through the dash down to 99c and, now, the free-to-play boom.

But while those are the headlines, there are plenty of developers taking different approaches, as the strengths of their own business dictates.

Another way

One such is German developer Fishlabs. It's always focused on high end 3D games, and hence a paid model.

"We charge what we think is right for a game's quality, which is $10," says CEO Michael Schade, concerning the pricing of its signature title Galaxy on Fire 2 HD.

"$4.99 is the sweetspot [in terms of volume], but $10 demonstrates it's a premium game."

Power up

Fishlabs isn't immune to the in-app purchase revolution, though; it's recently added IAP to Galaxy on Fire 2 HD.

"It was a painful decision internally," Schade says. "Galaxy on Fire is the branch we sit on so we don't want to do anything to harm it."

However, he said the company was surprised how few complaints it got.

"Some people like not grinding. If so, they can now spend $19.99 to get the best ship with the best weapons."

The justification is that $19.99 is same price as the Mac OS version.

Payer behaviour

One interesting result of this move has been seen in terms of how payer's behaviour changes on the occasions the game's price has been dropped for limited periods.

At the standard $10 price, Schade says the most popular IAP transaction is $4.99. At a sale price of $5, the most popular IAP package drops to 99c.

As he points out, an audience that's prepared to spend $10 on an iOS game is the sort of audience that's clearly happy to play for a high quality experience. As soon as you drop the entry price, this changes.

"Quality comes with a price," he argues.

"I think many users are beginning to realise that if something is free, it's likely to stink."

Square the circle

Nevertheless, even Fishlabs is considering whether it can pull of a true free-to-play version of Galaxy on Fire on Android, purely because there are tens of millions of potential players on the platform who can't yet experience the game.

"We understand the free-to-play model," Schade says, adding that paid games just don't work on Android.

"Free-to-play provides a large audience and viral marketing, but do those people want to pay, and what's their reaction to the way you monetise them?"

At the moment, the game's only available for Xperia Play and devices using Nvidia's Tegra chips as a purely free download, thanks to deals with Sony Ericsson and Nvidia.

Yet the problems of dealing with Android fragmentation, the cost of handling support when the game doesn't work, not to mention piracy means Schade doesn't have high hopes for Android, at least in terms of Google Play.