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iPhone Gaming Continues To Grow
1Up reports that the popularity of gaming on smartphones is growing, particularly on the iPhone. In fact, gaming on portable devices is growing even at home, where users presumably have access to more powerful platforms. CNN points out that the developer for Trism, one of the first popular games, has raked in over $250,000 in profits through the App Store. Apple exec Bob Borchers and various game developers recently discussed the future of games on the iPhone. "Patrick Gunn, director of marketing for EA Mobile, showcased Need for Speed Undercover, which will be available next month. Gunn says that EA has 'taken full advantage of all of the unique elements ... like touch, flick, accelerometer, and motion sensitivity' — and graphically, the game appears to be roughly on par with a PSP title."
I'm not getting an iPhone until I know Frontal Assault has been ported. Until then, eat my shorts Steve!
I'm not suprised its "growing" faster ...because at the home gaming has been around for years and is highly saturated, popular, and is now just pushing out slowly after its major strides.
Smartphone gaming is new, and has everywhere to go now, being pretty darn new.
If phone gaming can approach at home gaming, then that will be news.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I don't have an iPhone (I've got an N95) but I have noticed that I play more games on my mobile then on my XBox or PC. Mainly because it's always available and it's easier to get addicted to a game. Also, the mobile graphics have gotten good enough (at least on a small screen) that there's not really any reason to bother. With 8Gb of storage you can have some fairly immersive games.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Gaming grows, but when is the breakthrough in battery life gonna hit?
Why do people want to do things with a PHONE that will make it so that they can't use it as a PHONE?
Hang on, I was playing a game and my batteries dying.
How often have we all heard that one.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
Consider this quote: "The overhead and barriers to entry [for iPhone development] are so low that virtually anyone can afford to take a crack."
Does that mean that the first "HIT" is free?
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
And when you really think about it, paying any price for a digital download is simply price gouging anyway, since the cost of reproduction is zero. That means at $5, Trism is marked up 500 times. No wonder he got so rich, huh?
Stop being bitter and pulling numbers out of your ass.
Please can somebody tell me where I too can get a copy of Flash, I need to look at redtube NOWWWWWWWW
In addition to Trism, this other game is pretty intriguing, too.
No, actually. I know your comment is in jest, but Apple charges $100 for that "first hit" (the SDK). You have to pay them money for the privilege of developing an application they reserve the right to deny you the ability to distribute.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Trism is done by the same guy who translated and did romhacking for the NES and SNES.
God ol Neo Demiforce still at it, after all these years.
How do you suggest he be compensated? He wrote the software with the expectation of at least some financial reward, and he hit the jackpot. What's fair, in your opinion?
In addition to Trism, this other game is pretty intriguing, too.
So it really is like digital crack.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
A business model which doesn't depend on artificial scarcity. Many iPhone applications are free and use advertising as a business model. Another option is subscription services (this works well for games) in which you pay a recurring fee for the service of receiving a steady stream of new content (think MMORPGs). Merchandising is another option, though less relevant here.
The inevitable reply to this post is somebody whining "none of those are as profitable!" Okay, sure. But you must remember that artificial scarcity isn't a sustainable business model in the long term. If I want Trism, I can get it without paying for it with relative ease. Anything can be pirated, even iPhone apps.
There are only two things which stop people from pirating his game: 1. Ignorance of how to do this, something that will surely fade with time as piracy gets easier and easier, and 2. Guilt over piracy not compensating the author. The second one is a tougher nut to crack, but it's cracking.
The bottom line is artificial scarcity cannot be technologically enforced. Only legally enforced. So, unless Trism's author is willing to sue pirates like the RIAA, he's not going to be able to enforce his business model. Even the RIAA cannot enforce their business model to anywhere near 100% coverage, even with all their legal shenanigans.
And at the end of the day, it's not the consumer's responsibility to subsidize an obsolete business model. If this business model cannot be enforced without suing any customer who chooses to ignore it, it's obsolete. And as more and more people are beginning to realize this, reason #2, guilt, will go away too.
Once you have a culture that embraces p2p and rejects artificial scarcity, making any kind of money by charging a consumer for a digital download won't happen anymore. Monetization will have to be accomplished via one of the alternative business models I suggested, or one I've not thought up yet.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
The problem with free software zealots, such as yourself, is that you have no concept of business. The only thing you're accounting for is the download distribution cost. What about the equipment that Demeter used, the opportunity cost, the training and experience. None of those things are free.
You also don't understand the concept of risk. Demeter's application could have never been approved for sale, his concept could have proven to be boring, or he may not have been able to promote it. If any of those things happened, Demeter wouldn't make any money. If I'm going to invest $10,000 in a project that has only a 10% chance of succeeding, if it does succeed I need to be able to generate revenues of at least $100k just to cover the cost. There is no way that I would give an iPhone app even a 10% risk assessment, that's way too generous, considering all the potential risk factors.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
So 0 times 1 is $0.01, times 500 is $5, ergo there is a 500x markup. You really are a moron. It's not about the cost to duplicate, it's about the cost to produce.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Fair enough. But in the meantime, hats off to him for making a bundle.
Come to think of it, the "alternative business model" could simply be the App Store itself. It's convenient and easy for any non-technical person to buy stuff there very cheaply. Maybe it's simply worth paying the five bucks for the sheer convenience of it all. I mean really, five dollars? It's just not worth it to look for the app elsewhere. It's not like he's charging $100 for the thing.
Anyway, it's here to stay until market forces say otherwise. Your argument boils down to "it's ethically wrong to make money from artificial scarcity", but the market doesn't care about your personal ethics.
And anyway, it's certainly not unethical to charge very little for a lot of convenience, which is what's happened here. People pay five dollars and have a lot of fun; the author makes a decent bundle and puts a down payment on a house. Everyone wins.
I was wondering how you arrived at your odd conclusion that there was a 500% markup on what you maintain is a cost of zero. In that case of course, the markup was infinite. So then I figured you were just an idiot.
But then you decided to try and justify your lunacy, and show that not only are you bad at math, but that you have no ability to research things:
because $5 is 500 times one cent, the minimum price he could have set without making it free.
The minimum price you can set (without making it free) is $.99.
Now don't you feel like an absolute heel? Undoubtedly the answer is actually no, but the rest of us know how you should be feeling right about now - your punishment then shall be your inability to learn just how to remove the foot from your mouth as you wedge it in further.
You could have at least used Apple Hater Math, and worked out the markup starting from the development registration cost and the 80-Core Quad Blue Halogen Mac your kind claims you need for iPhone development.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've addressed that argument here. And ad hominems are immature.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
So a company spends 4 years and $100M to hire a team of 1,000, provide them with office space, equipment, and resources, and you believe that all they should be able to charge for the game is the cost to press the disks. You're either a troll or hilariously naive. And do tell where you can higher people to mow lawns for $5 an hour, the companies here cost much closer to $25 to cover the cost of the equipment, trucks, staff, profit, and management. Perhaps you'll understand the real world a little better when you have some bills to pay and are on your own.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
A business model which doesn't depend on artificial scarcity. Many iPhone applications are free and use advertising as a business model.
You are the first person I have ever seen that proclaims an advertising model beats advertisement free work, both from the producer and consumer side.
My hat is off to you for having let go of reality with both hands and then giving it a good kick to send you further away as fast as you can go.
Once you have a culture that embraces p2p and rejects artificial scarcity, making any kind of money by charging a consumer for a digital download won't happen anymore.
In reality the truth is that you can (like Apple) quite happily sell and endless amount of product to people even when they can easily download it for free (see: The Entire Music Industry). Enter, the App Store.
I write iPhone apps myself. Of course they will be pirated. It doesn't matter because in the end it's far easier to buy them than to pirate them, and to boot most people are not dishonest pricks who would steal a program just to make a point. In fact most pirates aren't even in that category, they just like to collect things and you'd never have made a cent from them anyway even if piracy was impossible.
Furthermore you know pretty much nothing about "Free Software", at least not the Free part. The Freedom is not what you think it is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No you didn't. You just said that $0 x 1 = $0.01, such that to go from nothing to $5 is a 500x markup. Kind of hard not to call a spade, a spade.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Yeah, sure, compared to the ludicrousness of consoles. But how about PCs? Or even Mac OS X on anything other than an iPhone? The barrier to entry on any of those platforms is zero.
On the PC or Mac there are costs for any practical, commercial venture. You need to pay for hosting the downloads, processing payments, and marketing the product. All of these can be done on the cheap, but you're not going to pull in $250K in a couple of months that way. The iPhone cost a hundred bucks to put an application up, but then it is in front of all the users and the download costs and payment processing is taken care of. It's a decent cost proposition in comparison to shareware on the Web, for example, and easier for many developers than trying to manage all those admin and marketing details.
I continue to be astonished by how people consider getting rich off of digital downloads to be at all a good thing. I respectfully submit that anyone who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few months of work "in their spare time" is being grossly overpaid.
That's capitalism. You don't honestly think most CEOs making a thousand times what their median employee does works that much harder to earn that money do you? The difference here that catches people's attention is the opportunity for the little guy to make it big, something becoming more and more scarce in our current economy.
And when you really think about it, paying any price for a digital download is simply price gouging anyway, since the cost of reproduction is zero.
But the development cost is not. Some of us have heard of this newfangled idea called "copyright" that allows people to create novel works without being paid in advance and profit from a (theoretically) limited monopoly on distribution of that work.
That means at $5, Trism is marked up 500 times.
Umm, interesting math.
The market may not care about my ethics right now, but inevitably some day it will. Obviously most people aren't going to be thinking in terms of whether or not artificial scarcity is ethical. What's going to happen is people are going to prefer the free download over p2p venues rather than the not free download from things like the App Store as is the case right now with Bit Torrent vs. the iTunes Music store. It's just simple competition. You can't compete with free, and less and less people are finding p2p unethical. Because it isn't.
As for convenience, piracy is pretty convenient and getting more convenient all the time. Really what prevents the critical mass necessary to abolish artificial scarcity is a highly sophisticated anti piracy marketing campaign put out by big content shaming us all into thinking p2p is somehow unethical. Remember: it isn't. It's not our responsibility to subsidize obsolete business models.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
And when you really think about it, paying any price for a digital download is simply price gouging anyway, since the cost of reproduction is zero. That means at $5, Trism is marked up 500 times. No wonder he got so rich, huh?
Among those likely to own an iPhone, we could guess that $5 probably represents somewhere between 1/2 to 1/8 of an hour of work. It's about the same price as a McDonald's lunch, and less than the price of a movie ticket. Those who purchase a game like this are indicating that the entertainment value of this game is worth the indicated price to them. Tell me, is it so outrageous to trade 15 minutes of your workday for a product which may keep you entertained for many hours?
I understand your argument, but you're looking at digital downloads from a purely technical viewpoint. By the same sort of reasoning, someone might determine that vacations are completely pointless because it's a one-time expenditure with absolutely nothing physically gained. There are many criteria by which to determine the value of a product.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I did not say $0 x 1 = $0.01, I said 1 cent is the lowest you can set a price before making it free. Thus, 1 cent is the basis for my markup calculation.
You can't use zero, because $0 x anything is $0, so if you're contending that there's zero markup on a $5 app, I'd call that a pretty ridiculous statement. But I don't want to put words in your mouth, so I'll simply ask how would you calculate the markup?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
The price of anything is determined by the cost of reproduction plus any additional markup. Software is digital information, and digital information has a marginal cost of reproduction of zero because copying digital information with a computer costs nothing.
You forgot overhead and labor.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
No, disks are not economically abundant goods. They cost >$0 to press because physical resources are expended making the disks. An internet download, on the other hand, expends no physical resources and costs almost nothing to transmit.
Thanks for the correction. You do realize this only helps my argument, right? In this case, the standard wage for one hour of work multiplied by the 500x markup Trism is using is $12,500 instead of my original apparently gross underestimate of $2,500.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I think that it is important to ask our selves what something is really worth. And in a free market that is simply how much another is willing to pay for a good or service that another provides.
As for the iPhone/iTouch growing in mobile app use, I would highly doubt that it is only because of the low cost of entry but do to the fact we are able to have a phone, a popular music player, and games with what was at the time innovative inputs (motion sensing). I feel that the real reason is nothing more than ease of use for the user. They can buy their music, games, and movies from one place (Apple's iTunes store). Then access weather, news, and maps/directions from one place. There are other devices that accomplish some of this but none that have archived all these goals plus the same market share as the iPhone/iTouch.
So is this person really being overpaid or have they just provided a very convent and inexpensive tool? So I ask, how can something be price gouging when there are those who are willing to pay for it when as you said there are plenty of alternatives - PC and Mac OS X.
Of course if we want to argue the merits of the capitalist system, I will leave that to the academics as it seems that argument is not going to end any time soon.
A negligible cost.
Cheaper to do it yourself then let Apple take 30%.
You still have to do that on the App Store. Sure, people will stumble on your app, but the real top contenders have external marketing.
You haven't substantiated that.
That argument is addressed here.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
You're ignoring the physical resources expended in the production of the McDonalds hamburger which have a much higher cost of reproduction than digital information.
As for "how we value products" you're making a pretty standard "people charge what the market is willing to pay" argument and I think you'll find that can change very quickly. Many, many people no longer believe mp3s are worth even $1, so they turn to p2p.
The same is happening with all forms of digital downloads. Everything from books, to software, to films. And as p2p gets easier and easier and people slowly begin to realize p2p is not morally wrong, what monetary value people place on digital downloads will, for better or worse, slowly crash to zero.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I have not forgotten, I have deliberately ignored it as it isn't relevant. I've covered that argument here.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Dan Quayle! Still. gaining. acceptance.
The bottom line is artificial scarcity cannot be technologically enforced.
Yes it can, with a game that only costs $5 most people will pay just because its more convenient than pirating the game. Why spend time cracking a phone and risk getting a virus when it only saves you a few bucks.
Many iPhone applications are free and use advertising as a business model.
When given the option I prefer to pay a dollar or two if it keeps me from having to watch advertisements.
The inconvenience of putting pirated apps on the iPhone will not always be so. In all likelihood, Apple will be forced to open their platform due to competition and general outrage over it being closed, in which case pirating apps and putting them on your phone will become far less inconvenient.
In the broader scope, pirating stuff in general is getting easier and easier and will continue to do so until anyone can do it.
You won't be given that option though. Because if you were, you wouldn't have to pay the dollar. You could just pirate the version of the app without ads.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
And you wanted to change this because⦠?
because copying digital information with a computer costs nothing.
So running all the datacenters and having all the staff and paying all the electricity bills and designing and building the app store app all "costs nothing"?
The price of anything is determined by the cost of reproduction plus any additional markup.
That's not correct. The price of anything is determined by the amount the buyer is willing to pay.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Really, so the guy/gal made some money off a game that people bought? No big deal to see here. Maybe your just pissed off cause you didn't think of it first? Lame.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
You have no concept of what it takes to produce and distribute something do you?
What about bandwidth, hardware, TIME.
You have failed to even consider what it takes from a technical perspective let alone a business perspective.
Worse, you begrudge someone for trying to make a fair living from their work.
Red herring. An alternative business model can more than adequately subsidize such costs. Being efficient doesn't hurt either, e.g. using Bit Torrent. I wrote in more detail regarding alternative business models here.
That argument is addressed here.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
That argument is addressed here.
That argument is addressed here.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I don't think it has anything to do with scarcity. It's about him choosing to charge people $5 to buy his game. Nobody said it was in limited supply. How much do you charge to let someone kick you in the nuts? Do you base that price on scarcity?
And as p2p gets easier and easier and people slowly begin to realize p2p is not morally wrong, what monetary value people place on digital downloads will, for better or worse, slowly crash to zero.
At which point people will virtually stop producing content because only hobbyists can afford to make stuff available for no cost. Professionals depend on making a decent living off the content they produce in order to be able to eat and have shelter over their heads, not to mention covering the costs of producing the content.
This is the part of P2P that is morally wrong. Apply the Categorical Imperative to the act of freely distributing content without the author's permission. If all produced content was distributed against the author's will then eventually the quality and quantity of content will dwindle. At that point both consumers and producers suffer. Consumers are not able to easily get quality content and producers are not able to use their talents in order to make a living. Wanton P2P just leads to stricter content lockdown and makes using content harder, not easier. It is therefore morally wrong to distribute by way of P2P content without the author's consent.
Why do you think we have to suffer through stuff like Macrovision, CSS, AACS, the Broadcast Flag, HDCP, and many more? All of these technologies are in reaction to people going overboard with copying content. These technologies make our goods cost more and get in the way of the ease of use of content but the content providers feel the need to protect their livelihoods from overzealous copying of their content. I'm sure that if people restricted their copying to purely personal uses then most of these technologies would never have seen the light of day but the truth is that most copying is done in order to get around paying content producers for the work they put into making the content.
Sapere aude!
Red herring. An alternative business model can more than adequately subsidize such costs.
No, that's bullshit. You can always subsidize any cost but that doesn't make the cost go away, it just means you take the loss because you think it's acceptable to further another goal. The markup is still sales price - unit cost and the unit cost still includes the systems needed to run the download. Whether there are other ways to make money is the real red herring, there always are but this specific method is being used and apparently successful.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Development costs should play no part in how a price is set. I might require only $20 an hour and 40 hours to develop something that would require you $40 an hour and 80 hours to develop the same thing. Thus development costs are arbitrary. Prices should only be set based on cost of reproduction plus a reasonable markup for profit.
What about the cases where there might only be 10 consumers of a product that takes thousands of man-hours to produce? You don't think that that the development costs should be included at all? There are quite a few products out there where the development costs are significant compared to the production and distribution costs and any real business HAS to include ALL of the costs in the prices of its products.
It's a completely unreasonable position to take that a business shouldn't include all of its costs when figuring out what to charge for a product.
Now if you want to talk about the viability of that product at that price then that's a different matter entirely. Obviously in the case at hand this developer's price is more than viable since he's sold many thousands of copies at $5 each. If you want to do him one better then by all means make a similar game and sell it at a lower price. That is, after all, one of the cornerstones of a free market.
Sapere aude!
In all likelihood, Apple will be forced to open their platform due to competition and general outrage over it being closed
No. Really, no. This is the cellphone market we're talking about, "open" is a foreign term there. Even the Google phones are getting locked down.
In the broader scope, pirating stuff in general is getting easier and easier and will continue to do so until anyone can do it.
It has ALWAYS been easy yet people kept buying software.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Prices should only be set based on cost of reproduction plus a reasonable markup for profit.
There is no should, there is only what does happen and what does not happen.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I worked on a WiiWare game and got 13% royalties. 13% of zero is still zero. The game sold like shit, and I got zilch out of royalties. Fact of the matter is that the game's design was just bad. Not my responsibility, and I did get paid an hourly wage for working on it. (I didn't exactly rake in the cash, and I worked for free for about a month (yes, I regret taking pity on the fools)).
But the fact is, the guy deserves a fair bit of cash for coming up with an idea that sells. He doesn't deserve to retire on it, but that's not what $250k does for you. It just lets you rest for a few months, and let you know you did good. And for the record, that's a couple of years of salary for me. But I think the guy earned it. Coming up with a game idea that people will buy is a difficult proposition. It's not that the WiiWare game I worked on was terrible. It was just decidedly mediocre.
End Price - Cost To Acquire - Cost to Stock - Cost To Distribute
You are making the assumption that cost to stock and distribute are ~0; I won't argue that, since I don't know what it costs to run the store selling the App, and Tax et al. Interesting that you ignore the 'cost to acquire' since its fixed and you only have to pay that once in this case (ignoring maintenance and support) but it is still notable.
It's kind of like you're talking about the efficiency of an algorithm, constants are always ignored.
O(n) = 1 being the business model.
That's a great algorithm right? Oh, forgot the constant c, which is 10^238.
Just because there is a fixed front end costs doesn't mean that there is no cost, or that it is not valid.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
The price of something in a free and open market is what people are willing to pay for it. How hard it was to create has jack shit to do with anything.
When you ignore basic economic principles, you end up with... well, let's not go there.
And when you really think about it, paying any price for a digital download is simply price gouging anyway, since the cost of reproduction is zero. That means at $5, Trism is marked up 500 times. No wonder he got so rich, huh?
You seem to have a moral objection against high mark up percentages. Your first error is discussing margins in terms of percentages of costs. The only case where this is meaningful is when there is a risk involved with the cost. Since you disregard development costs, marketing costs and write-off costs, the remaining cost (distribution + "replication") carries no risk.
The markup percentage has nothing to do with how "rich" you get. Your profit comes from absolute margin times volumes sold. An acquaintance of mine runs a business with a "mark up" of < 5 % and they are still able to make loads of money. Are they saintly in your eyes?
If prices are based solely on the marginal cost, then no revenue is being devoted to recouping fixed or operating costs. By definition, the investment will be a net loss. Part of the "reasonable markup for profit" will have to be spent on costs incurred by producing the original good and running the business.
I read your argument that the price should rely solely on the cost of production. That is wrong.
When wondering about what to charge what you base it on is the internal rate of return. This determines whether or not you should invest in a project.
Scarcity or whatever else plays a role insofar that it allows you to increase or decrease your IRR. The advert model is not a means to an ends. In fact the advert model makes it very difficult to know your IRR. It is a leap of faith and in these difficult times maybe a wrong leap of faith.
Though please do read some econometrics books...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Dude you have no clue here...
Again read about IRR (Internal Rate of Return).
The basis of IRR is the question would I be better off putting this money into a fixed rate return investment, or putting it to work in a project.
If the IRR indicates that I am better off putting this into a treasury or corporate bond then I don't do this project.
So here is the thing, if the project costs are (example illustration only)
100 USD to develop
20 USD per year to maintain
10 USD per year to run the business
and the life of the product is 2 years (before I need to invest again) and I want an IRR of say 8%. Then I need to earn approx 86 USD per year (base investment + return)
Of course my numbers are off because I did not calculate the discounted cash flow.
To understand this topic please get yourself the book "Valuations".
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
You could have at least used Apple Hater Math, and worked out the markup starting from the development registration cost and the 80-Core Quad Blue Halogen Mac your kind claims you need for iPhone development.
That might be a slight exaggeration. Someone who already owns a desktop PC running Windows or Linux doesn't need the 80-core Mac, just a Mac mini, a KVM switch, an iPod Touch, and a developer certificate, and possibly a cheap USB keyboard or mouse to replace a PS/2 one. This $1,000 is more than an impulse buy for an underemployed programmer like myself but still a lot cheaper than what's needed for a game console. The real Apple hater math involves the money spent feeding and housing oneself while developing an application that Apple ends up rejecting.
His business model doesn't depend on artificial scarcity - his time to develop the application certainly is scarce, and he is more than entitled to ask for money in return for it.
No, his argument isn't a red herring, and development costs most definitely should play a part in how a price is set - its called 'overhead'.
Take a basic course in business economics some time.
And you are ignoring the physical resources expended in the production of Trism - time, energy (heating, electricity), overheads (rent, hardware costs) etc.
You are blissfully ignoring all of those things in your own argument - Trism didn't just 'appear' out of thin air, just as the burger didn't appear out of thin air.
Production costs are a lot more than the very last step of actual distribution.
That's the most moronic comment I've read on Slashdot for a long time. Stupid, factually incorrect, flawed math, utterly biased, and a wilful ignorance of how business works.
My favourite is that you think that a reproduction cost of zero and a $5 ticket price equals a markup of 500 times. Way to divide by zero!
So 0 times 1 is $0.01, times 500 is $5, ergo there is a 500x markup.
Zero times one is zero. Therefore, times 500 is zero.
Stop being bitter and pulling numbers out of your ass.
This is Slashdot, you must be new here.
But what is the cost of an hour of lawn mowing?
perhaps $.50 - $.75 in food and $2.00 in gas (you appear to not want to calculate person time, or overhead into costs)?
That means the person charging $25.00 (still way low, I charged that when I was a kid, the pros get closer to $50 or $75 if they have real equipment) is marking things up 10 times, and when gas was cheaper it was closer to 15 times.
Your argument about pay can be flipped around too you know. Anybody who makes something that tens of thousands of people find worth it and incredibly enjoyable in a matter of a few months is grossly under-paid (you see, when a luxury item is purchased both sides benefit from the transaction, not just the seller. Buying luxury goods is not a zero sum game).
The developer is not even the person making the money from the digital download, they are making it for the content. Apple makes the money for the download.
This is similar to CDs (which are economically abundant) costing a few cents, which goes to a pressing house, a few dollars go to the shipper, a few more to retail store, and the rest paid for the content (usually owned by a record company).
If you take out the $10-$12 spent on distribution/retail profit, you are left with an even bigger rip-off taken by the content owner than the few dollars in the $5 game example.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
And if you can't make that $100 back in short order, you're not really trying. Seriously, $100 is cheap. I know Google subsidizes their development program all the way down to $0 by diverting funds from their advertising business, but that's a business decision that doesn't really change the basic economics.
E pluribus unum
That isn't the point. The article contends that the iPhone developer program "democratizes" game development. Closed platforms are not democratic in nature. The size of the fee or how quickly a developer could possibly make it back is irrelevant.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Marginal cost isn't the total cost. Did the app write itself?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You're absolutely right that it is not our responsibility to subsidize obsolete business models. However, if you don't want to subsidize a business model, then buy from competing business models or don't use products from that market at all.
Piracy is not a competing business model, it's just piracy. Just because a business model is obsolete doesn't make it ethical to do whatever the hell you want. You don't walk up to a newspaper stand, say "hey look, the Free Times right over there pays for itself with just advertisements" and then steal a copy of the New York Times while feeling all smug.
I think people have taken the music industry example and run too far with it. With the music industry there were/are legitimate concerns that the giants in the RIAA were fixing prices, intentionally squashing competition, and using the artists' popularity to further entrench themselves in the recording industry rather than paying a fair share back to the content creator.
In this case, however, the content creator is getting his cut. If you don't feel his content is worth his price, just don't use it.
I hope you don't design aircraft: I have not forgotten about drag or gravity, I have ignored them as they are irrelevant.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thus development costs are arbitrary.
So is the value of the software.
Development costs should play no part in how a price is set.
Wrong.
It would be like me charging $2500 to mow your lawn.
No, it wouldn't. Lawn mowing != unique software. If you don't want to pay $2,500, you pay the neighbor kid $20 to do it. Provide Edward Scissorhand's service and you can charge that much.
Thus, digital information should be monetized using a business model that doesn't depend on artificial scarcity.
It's not based on artificial scarcity. It's based on value and that is determined by what people are willing to pay. Maya, for example, should not be a $50 app. It solves a million dollar problem. I'm not sure why I even have to explain this.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
You just failed the turing test.
Unity3D and Mono seem to be making it easier for developers to write games for the iPhone, this is just awesome.
Especially since Unity3D will be ported to Linux afaik.
Looking at the iPhone and the new Nintedo DSi, I was surprised to see that the DSi did not include motion sensing technology. Maybe the DSi2 will end up having it, since IMHO this is going to become a big part of mobile gaming.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
That's not quite accurate. The SDK is available after a free registration at Apple's iPhone Developer site. I got a copy just out of curiosity even though I'm not a developer.
You do have pay them their ninety-nine dollah if you want to distribute your software through the App Store, though.
This ain't rocket surgery.
It's only irrelevant if your purpose is upholding ideals rather than making software.
My grocery store's business model is to stock food and charge me money for any items I take from the store. This business model can not be enforced if they don't press charges when I shoplift. Therefore grocery stores are obsolete.
Any security measures they might put in place may make it harder to shoplift, but this is artificial. As I get craftier, and start wearing bulkier coats for the winter, I can get food without paying for it with relative ease.
Of course, food scarcity is more or less real scarcity, not artificial. I know food != software, but your argument that a business which uses the law to prevent people from taking the product of it's work is just dumb.
Things can cost less than $0.01 I could very easily sell something for $0.005, it would just require that I sell them in multiples of 2 or that you and I have an account of some sort set up. So, your basis is off.
I think you have to use some sort of "as X approaches zero situation".
I've addressed that argument here. And ad hominems are immature.
So is repeating the same stupid argument over and over again.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
These... entertainment pieces... are not "gaming". They are pathetic shadows using themes from real games, or gussied-up remakes of games from 1980-something. And when you are playing this thing on your iPhone, I would say your activity is best called "squinting". The day I hear someone claim the label "gamer", and all they own is a fucking iPhone, I will make them eat it. (reasons: 1 - they are doing gaming wrong, 2 - they are lately-come wannabes who think they can talk like gamers with 20 years of history, 3 - they are fad-following fanbois who wouldn't be touching a game if it wasn't suddenly cool to do)
Burn all iPhones!
You're misinformed. The SDK is free to download and use. It's only $100 to publish a game on the app store.
everything in moderation
And do tell where you can higher people to mow lawns for $5 an hour, the companies here cost much closer to $25 to cover the cost of the equipment, trucks, staff, profit, and management.
Immigrants or children will mow lawns for $5 an hour...
The biggest problem with gaming on the iPhone is that only retarded people have an iPhone so the iPhone games are all retarded. Also, Nintendo has Mario, Donkey Kong and Link. Apple has Steve Jobs, so Super Mario 64 DS, admittedly not a great name though certainly a superb game, becomes Super Steve Jobs iPhone, which is a retarded name for what would surely be a retarded game. What would Super Steve Jobs do? Would there be a magic kingdom? Who are his enemies and who must he rescue? Worst game ever.
Now wash your hands.
The real Apple hater math involves the money spent feeding and housing oneself while developing an application that Apple ends up rejecting.
The truth is anyone can tell what kind of app might be questionable, and work on something you know can be accepted. The fear of Apple rejecting apps is vastly overblown, there are just a few categories to be careful of.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your argument assumes that the percentage of users of your iPhone applications who are pirates will not rise and that the percentage of people will not find piracy unethical will also not rise
Not at all. It only assumes that buying the application will be easier than piracy, which is basically always true. No matter how easy you make pirating it involves extra steps.
As noted, you are the one in utter denial about market forces. You are obviously one of those people who would have claimed iTunes would never have worked. Keep up at those windmills Quixote!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your argument is a red herring. Development costs should play no part in how a price is set. I might require only $20 an hour and 40 hours to develop something that would require you $40 an hour and 80 hours to develop the same thing. Thus development costs are arbitrary. Prices should only be set based on cost of reproduction plus a reasonable markup for profit.
Why not? If a company spends $50,000 developing a program (A reasonable price for 1 cheap developer employed for 1 year) and then distributes it digitally, you're saying they should only sell it for like $.05/copy? They would have to sell a million copies just to break even.
Not to mention that when a program is shipped, ongoing costs don't just stop dead. There's maintenance, support, sales, advertising, and other such ongoing costs you have to deal with.
And incidentally, unless your app is featured in one of Apple's commercials, the average sales of software in the App store is about 16/day. Assume you price it at the App Store minimum of $0.99 (the only lower price point being 'Free'), which you apparently still think is an enormous markup since you're only taking into account reproduction costs. Apple takes its 30% cut, leaving you with about 70 cents. Times 16 is $11/day. Times 365 is about $4000/year. So to make up that $50,000 worth of development cost would take about 12 years, and God help you if you need to fix a bug, because you can't afford to keep your developer employed during that period or it adds another 12 years. Oh, and this assumes that people keep downloading an app at that rate when you can't afford to debug it or market it in any way.
Software prices aren't based on "artificial scarcity". They're based on scarcity of Programmers, and decent programmers are a very scarce commodity indeed.
Don't blame him, blame his aging Intel CPU..
I am in full agreement - but as always, anything that isn't praising Apple gets modded down. Also note how the iphone doesn't even support industry standard cross-platform methods for running games, that almost all other phones support.
Games have been on phones for years, and there is nothing special about the IPHONE here - it's a shame that the media (including Slashdot) give free advertising to Apple, as if they were the only phone company around.
It might perhaps be an interesting statistic that games usage among Iphone users has grown the most, but that doesn't say anything about market share as gaming platforms, or usage overall. Also, since Apple is a late-comer to the market, one would expect growth to be higher, as it is starting from a smaller amount.
I don't recall having a Motorola V980 Gaming Continues To Grow article on CNN, not to mention an article for every other phone.
Apple propaganda reads like CNN's article
as always, anything that isn't praising Apple gets modded down
And the mods prove it - brilliant!
I'm still waiting for a Motorola V980 Gaming Continues To Grow article, btw.