$20 premium games section coming to iPhone App Store?
By Dave Parrack
The App Store has been an absolute revelation. With over 500 million downloads already, Apple itself is making money, and so are the thousands of developers, both amateur and professional. Meanwhile, the iPhone has started to compete with more established games consoles such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. So who can blame Apple for wanting to put these two phenomenons together.
There are thousands of developers selling their wares on the iPhone App Store at the moment, and that has lead to some magnificent success stories such as that of Ethan Nicholas, the developer of the bestselling iShoot. Games are a big part of the App Store, but with so many, some are getting lost in the crowd.
While the Top Apps charts are a good way of sorting the apps and signposting people towards where they should be headed, they do tend to be dominated by lower-priced apps – a result of market forces and the recession clearly at work.
This means the higher-priced apps, such as games developed by big companies, are at risk of getting ignored. If Apple truly wants the iPhone to start competing as a legitimate handheld games device in its own right, this is clearly a problem, and one that companies such as EA would want solving before it truly embraces the format.
Pocket Gamer is reporting how Apple could now be planning an easy solution to the problem – a premium games section on the App Store. This area would be restricted to large publishers and the games would have a fixed price point around the $20 mark. Apple could announce details of the move at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.
Games are already a large part of the App Store, with over 1,500 titles available, or 25 percent of the total number. But the big name publishers would have to be accommodated in order for the iPhone to fly as a games machine in its own right. This seems like a sensible solution. The only question left would be whether that $20 price point would be too high for most?
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