iGame Radio

In three days, the world will bear witness to the new Mac App Store. Mac gamers ask if this means they can get access to more games in a faster, easier, and cheaper way. Mac game developers ask if this means that their games will fight a race to the financial bottom in a pricing war that will inevitably kill most of the Mac game market. The answer to both, I believe, is yes and no.

Apple announced the Mac App Store back in October, and developers have been submitting apps, including games, since early November. Unlike the original iTunes App Store, Apple has even released the Store’s review guidelines before it opened.

The potential of the Mac App Store is great for all Mac gamers, because it places a large portion of games in one location. It will provide the purchasing power of the OSX Downloads site that Apple has already announced will no longer offer apps. It will also provide the aggregation and review potential of the Apple Games website. This does lead to the question of whether the Games site will be affected as well, but no announcement regarding its future has been made as of yet.

The Mac App Store is modeled after the iTunes App Store. You can search for apps by category or do a specific search, read the developer’s descriptions and reviews by other users, look over screenshots, purchase and download the app from the store, even get updates from the store when they are available. Apple claims that the purchase process is a one-click install. Basically, you click to buy and the app installs immediately…including installing an icon on your dock.

Apple doesn’t say whether the user has a choice about where to install the application, or whether or not to place it on the dock. For example, I place all my games in a subfolder of my Applications folder. And only games I’m actively reviewing go on my dock. This lack of choice miffs me a bit, and I wonder how many other users would be bothered about this lack of choice to make about where they can place their installs or their icons.

Apple also doesn’t say whether video trailers will be included in within those developer descriptions as well, and as any gamer knows, trailers are a mainstay and perhaps requirement of any game developer/publisher’s marketing of a game. However, screens of the Mac App Store available so far on the Apple website don’t reveal any information about trailers, though if there were any allowed, one would think that Apple would have mentioned it.

A decision Apple has made is that no trials or demos will be allowed on the Mac App Store.

From Apple’s News and Announcements for Apple Developers:

Mac App Store Submission Tip: Do not submit demos, trials, or betas for Mac App Store Review

Your website is the best place to provide demos, trial versions, or betas of your software for customers to explore. The apps you submit to be reviewed for the Mac App Store should be fully functional, retail versions of your apps.

Many game developers and publishers had an immediate response to this decision and it was mostly negative. The majority of Indie Mac game developers release their games in demo/trial format with the opportunity to upgrade to the full game upon purchase. However, I see this decision as a small thundercloud with a very large silver lining.

This is an opportunity for Mac game developers and publishers to get a large number of eyes onto their websites, while in fact potentially increasing the number of sales of their games anyway. Certainly placing the full version of the game onto the Mac App Store for sale can’t hurt…if someone wants to purchase the game without trying it out first, kudos to them. But a well-written developer description of the game can include a link to the trial version for anyone to access. If written properly, many potential buyers will want to click on that link to get a free copy of the limited version first…especially if the website is designed well so that the potential buyer can download with very few clicks.

As for pricing, one should really look very closely at the iTunes App Store for lessons. Not the superficial lesson that one hears over and over, that apps must be priced at $0.99 in order to survive. Because evidence shows that might not be true. The recent price wars on the App Store just before Christmas saw EA dropping most of their $9.99 games to $0.99 in order to sell big. And yes, they did get 16 of their games into the Top 30 Paid Games. But that’s just selling units. When looking at gross sales, there’s a different set of numbers. EA Mobile got only six in the Top 30 Grossing. Of the total, eleven were freemium games, thirteen are $0.99 titles, and six were premium games.

This seems to show that dropping prices like that will only help you if you are prepared to do it in the long-term. And the practice may only work for long-term gross if you have a lot of games in your archive to sell (or you’re doing microtransactions). But most Indie Mac game developers don’t have the kind of large scale archive of games that an iOS publisher…like EA, ngmoco, or GameLoft…has. So a better policy might be to sell your games at a premium price, stick to good customer support, and update on a regular schedule.