There are a lot of first class (>=3.99$) games that are on deep “Sales” at the moment. Some months ago this was not the case because quality games were too fresh to be on deep sales. Now, the big idevelopers work on their second/third sequels (generation) of their games and this let them some space to experiment with older titles (drop them to 0.99$).
If this is going to be the case from now on, how could the “one man show” ideveloper face this phenomenon of extreme competition? It will be very difficult to massively sell the next zombieville at 0.99, when at the same price the player can get Hero of Sparta, Real Soccer, Rolando 1 and some dozens of other first class titles. Imagine Sims 3 or Tetris at 0.99 after some months. Worst of all, imagine this type of competition from big titles that play in the same game category as your game does.
I know that if you have something innovative to sell, everything is possible. But I am very much concerned about a huge dynamics shift in AppStore that can make the life of indie developer much much harder (if not realistically pointless).
What do you think about all these? :roll:
It’s very easy to read too much into the App Store business; people generally seem to have a natural disposition to worry rather than feel optimistic.
I can’t discuss my own titles (all non-Unity) or sales particulars, but I can assure you that the old adage of “Safety in numbers” applies to the App Store.
My (our) titles don’t sell in great numbers, they’re not chart busters and to be honest they’re very niche, but they make enough money to feed 4-5 people a month on a good wage.
If you have focus, good standards and a steady hand (get things out the door on schedule) then you can be a success without chasing the competition.
It can take a while, especially if you’re just starting, but once you have momentum you’ll feel a lot more confident. My best advice is: Play the games, don’t play the competition 
A few things to not forget…
- There are millions of device owners out there, and even still the majority have yet to become app-buyers.
- iPhones Touches are still selling.
- Nobody buys a game twice (well not the majority)
- It’s more fun than packing fruit.
Also there are not only games on the iPhones…
It is a phone not a game console.
There’s been a lot of worry about this recent trend due to some major sales by Gameloft, Popcap and others. Here’s some things to consider before declaring the sky is falling…
Big publishers have big overhead, and cannot sustain a low price point for a products entire lifespan or it simply won’t be profitable. A crazy sale can buy an established app a second wind (i.e. Peggle), but it won’t last forever (Peggle is back into the 50’s on the charts again), and it saturates your potential clientele (there are now tens of thousands of Peggle owners who paid 20% of what they might have eventually). If Peggle had launched at $1 and stayed there, it wouldn’t have made as much total revenue, which is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. Indy developers will always have the advantage when it comes to aggressive pricing because we never have to charge $10 because we spent a million on development.
Also, a few big games having a big sale doesn’t actually have a dramatic ripple effect on the sales of other Apps. During the torrent of new apps, updates, and sales in the last couple weeks of OS 3.0 transition, my sales of Zombieville have been largely unaffected. My position on the charts has ping-ponged wildly, from around #50 a couple weeks ago, to 73, back up to 60… and all the while my sales have been pretty much flat.
Furthermore, being in the top 10, or even top 100 is not necessary to make a decent living. I actually don’t expect my next game to do as well as Zombieville, but it doesn’t have to. In fact, if it does even half as well it’d be a huge success for me, but probably wouldn’t even break even if it had been developed by EA and the like.
And lastly, big budgets and big teams can only buy scale, you can’t buy style. An indy team is never going to be able to make a racing game that has as many tracks, cars, textures etc. as what EA can crank out. But there’s plenty of room for games and apps that do not rely on massive amounts of content to be competitive.
Zombieville might be an indie game, but it’s so well done it competes easily with the big guys. We just need to strive for quality releases.