I sometimes purchase $5 - $10 games <i>just because they do not have in-app purchases</i>, as support for letting me pay for the game outright instead of Zyngafying it.<p>I especially love to give the author money when the game is great and they offer you a demo version!<p>For example, check out Thomas Zighem's incredible Genesia, a Populous + Civ style 4X strategy game, for which he offers a free "Lite" version and a dirt cheap pay version, with no in app purchases. It's an incredible game on the iPad, based on his circa '92 Amiga 500 game:<p>Review: <a href="http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Number=41914" rel="nofollow">http://www.mobiletechreview.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Numb...</a><p>Indie developer's site: <a href="http://www.genesia-game.com/en/" rel="nofollow">http://www.genesia-game.com/en/</a><p>App store: <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genesia-for-ipad-the-7-gems/id455692368?mt=8" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/genesia-for-ipad-the-7-gems/i...</a><p>(I found this game by browsing the Strategy section and systematically looking at games over $5.)
I think this is a correct title but an incorrect subtitle.<p>The problem with spending five dollars on an app for me isn't that it isn't expensive, but rather I've paid five dollars for apps that opened once found to be unusable and never opened again. And I've done it over and over again…<p>And that's the problem freemium solves in the app store: it's a way of giving me a free trial to see if this app does what I need it to do, before I have to pay. It lets me separate out the lemons from the good stuff.
I absolutely hate this idea. It's supply and demand, make an app that's amazingly better then anything else on the market and charge more for it. The fact that developers constantly re-skin games/apps and then cry that the app store is ruined because of saturation is bs. If customers are not buying an app that's $5, its not worth $5, no matter how much value you "think" it has.