In-App Purchases Allowed for Free Apps ... Now What?

Unity Engine
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1

I’d love to post a free version of my next game and then use in-app to let the user upgrade, as Apple just officially allowed us to do today.

Thing is, I have no idea how to do this in Unity iPhone?

Anyone want to share? :wink:

2

more info there - sounds good to me :slight_smile:

3

There are basically two ways with Unity:

  1. You have the content already in and unlock it upon buying.
  2. As Unity iPhone Advanced user you could use asset bundles and download them from the net as required

Keep in mind, that you must handle the whole unlock transaction and that you must backup the transaction so the user can get his bought stuff again even after an uninstall and reactivation or usage on a different device under the same itunes acc! Apple does not offer any in app purchase history and download.

4

Thanks, dMan!

Time for some samples and examples now.

:wink:

5

That sounds… difficult…

Oh well, I’ll figure it out… :slight_smile:

6

There is actually a service you could use for that inapp purchase stuff if you don’t want to build your own handling systems.

the two I know are
https://www.ilime.com/
http://urbanairship.com/in-app-purchase/

7

I thought they kept a record of the transaction, at least for the non-consumable products and subscriptions. At least, that’s what I get from reading about restoring transactions in the docs: StoreKit docs

edit: I guess it’s just non-consumables, which for Lite/Full version upgrades should be completely sufficient.

edit 2: Naturally, if you’re trying to do something other than Lite/Full upgrades and basic purchases, you’ll need one of those services you mentioned. Hopefully, I didn’t confuse the point.

8

Has anyone here had any experience with said services?

9

I’m in Portland, and I’ve actually met the Urban Airship guys. They gave a presentation at iPhone DevCamp on how to implement StoreKit, and why you should go for their service instead.

http://www.slideshare.net/steve918/in-app-purchase

Hopefully they will offer a Unity plug-in to simplify integration.

10

One major problem with in-app purchases in Unity is that, as far as I know, you cannot load an asset bundle locally.

From the docs I read, there was no way to load asset bundles from local storage, they have to be retrieved from the web each time.

Can anyone confirm?

The only assets that I’m sure you can load from local storage (byte array) is textures.

11

Great info here. :slight_smile:

Just wanted to warn about something.

Unless Apple does something clever and new with the App Store “top” lists, you will be hustling your premium app among the top free apps and acquiring the wonderful reviews that come along with that. :wink:

The big FPS deathmatch game Eliminate is going this route but with a VERY well-thought out plan for making money on the back end and a big head of hype steam.

As of now, I’m a bit uneasy with this whole development as it could mark a significant shift in how to get noticed and a significant increase in responsibilities for us devs.

I’m always hopeful for the best, though.

12

would be newe to me. The WWW call accepts any protocol, including the file:// protocol :slight_smile:

13

I suspect the reason dremora has so many posts, is because he’s like Stephen Hawking… He can’t speak with his mortal body because 99% of his energy runs his brain, thus the only way he can communicate is through an external communication device.

This is possibly also why he always sounds so soul-less :slight_smile:

14

lol …
Naw, by far not that smart nor do I doubt I will ever be that known ^^
But you could be right with the energy distribution in my body or at least its in the right direction. I’m kind of a head person.

15

That would be a boon. I’ll have to verify that.

16

We would love to provide this to the Unity community, but honestly we don’t have any one with Unity development experience on board. I could hack something together myself, but it probably wouldn’t be the quality I would be happy publishing. We may be able to hire someone with the talent to produce something of high quality in the future, but I have no time line for something like that.

If there is someone in the Unity community interested in building (and open-sourcing) this we could probably work out something in terms of offering our services to you for compensation for your work.

If anyone is interested in discussing this further contact steven@urbanairship.com

Cheers,
Steven

17

In the other thread, JTBentley made the point that adoption of 3.0 is low. I think this is a big wrinkle in the situation, if I’m understanding it correctly.

You could make a free game with 5 levels, and offer to let the user buy 10 more levels using in app purchase.

But those on 2.21 or earlier would not be able to make the purchase. So you’d never be able to sell to them?

Seems you have to make a judgement call, or keep a separate lite and paid app for the majority of people who haven’t yet updated to 3.0 or later.

18

He is mistaken…it’s quite high, but significantly lower on the iPod touch (because of not being free). Otherwise it’s over 90% on the iPhone last I heard (including 3.1 of course), and 75% overall.

On 2.2.1 it wouldn’t run at all.

–Eric

19

I would be interested in seeing that data, last reports I’ve seen are months old and showed 75-80% adoption rate.

This chart is a little confusing at first glance, 50% are 3.0, 23% are 3.1, so 73% of users have upgraded to a version that supports StoreKit.

http://www.iphonehacks.com/2009/09/admob-report-reveals-poor-adoption-of-iphone-os-31.html

Something else to consider is the people who download apps from AppStore are probably far more likely to update their phone. Especially if they are downloading programs over 10mb that require them to connect to iTunes. So I would be pretty confident in saying the remaining 20% are likely to be users that are less likely to download things from the AppStore to begin with.

There are a couple of options:

  1. Upgrade to 3.0 or not, things to consider
    a. what percentage of sales might be lost if you only support 3.0
    b. what added sales will you would be missing through StoreKit
  2. Build 3.0 in features, but retain 2.0 compatibility (This can be a lot of work)
    a. Is the 2.0 users that are continuing to download your app worth more than the ongoing development effort to maintain compatibility.
20

2.2.1 is old and obsolete.

We’re already 3 releases forth, users have to update their stuff if they want great things.

Keeping it on 2.2.1 is either a jailbreak choice, or a laziness choice. So we technically don’t have to bother. :wink:

Haven’t we learned lessons from IE6 ?