Heisting the App Store: 500,000 Paid Downloads in 1 Week • Hacker News Board

Re: Heisting the App Store: 500,000 Paid Downloads in 1 Week

#21

Post by flyosity » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 1:22 AM UTC

jamie_ca wrote: post #17

Is there more to the app than a sudoku rehash, a Rush Hour rehash, Sokoban, and a sliding tile game? I mean, those are all reasonably nice puzzles and should be easily worth a $1 download just as is, but that seems like a crazy amount of activity for slight variations to common puzzles wrapped up in some pretty gloss.

As an iPhone developer (well, mainly designer, but I also write Cocoa) I can tell you that thinking it's "some pretty gloss" is a big mistake. It's not "gloss" it's incredible over-execution and it's what separates a regular app from a blockbuster app. This is especially true in games. The audio design, impeccable visual design and extreme planning of every single user interaction is what takes an app to the top.

By dismissing immaculate execution and over a year's worth of work from some of the top game & visual designers in the iPhone industry as "some pretty gloss" you're completely missing why it (and almost every other Tap Tap Tap app) has went #1.

Re: Heisting the App Store: 500,000 Paid Downloads in 1 Week

#22

Post by jamie_ca » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 3:23 AM UTC

flyosity wrote: post #21

jamie_ca wrote: post #17

Is there more to the app than a sudoku rehash, a Rush Hour rehash, Sokoban, and a sliding tile game? I mean, those are all reasonably nice puzzles and should be easily worth a $1 download just as is, but that seems like a crazy amount of activity for slight variations to common puzzles wrapped up in some pretty gloss.

As an iPhone developer (well, mainly designer, but I also write Cocoa) I can tell you that thinking it's "some pretty gloss" is a big mistake. It's not "gloss" it's incredible over-execution and it's what separates a regular app from a blockbuster app. This is especially true in games. The audio design, impeccable visual design and extreme planning of every single user interaction is what takes an app to the top. By…

Yeah, I understand that the visuals are what gets the masses to jump on it - especially since that's basically all you have to base your opinion on in the app store.

That they went almost 2/3 of the development time before plugging the games in is also an indication that they know exactly where they need to focus to make it such a hit.

I think a few years of desktop linux experience combined with a love of ugly-but-fun 8- and 16-bit console games has just left me in the habit of looking beyond the shiny to identify the crunchy gameplay lurking underneath.

Re: Heisting the App Store: 500,000 Paid Downloads in 1 Week

#23

Post by smackfu » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 1:14 PM UTC

jamie_ca wrote: post #17

Is there more to the app than a sudoku rehash, a Rush Hour rehash, Sokoban, and a sliding tile game? I mean, those are all reasonably nice puzzles and should be easily worth a $1 download just as is, but that seems like a crazy amount of activity for slight variations to common puzzles wrapped up in some pretty gloss.

Yeah, they got my purchase, but the actual game lost my interest after about a day.

Given that, a $1 game only really has to hold my interest for a day so I'm not that miffed. But the $1 games that I play for weeks are the ones that I really love, unlike this one.

Re: Heisting the App Store: 500,000 Paid Downloads in 1 Week

#24

Post by smackfu » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 1:17 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #20

kenjackson wrote: post #15

This is great. Although I'm reminded of Halo Reach doing $200M in 1 day. Clearly not the same scale of product, but just reminds me of how much money console games make. And does make me wonder if the .99 price point will make it hard to make a lot of money with mobile games, even with hits. With that said, there's not many Halo Reach's that have ever been made.

The .99 price point makes developing anything but mega-hits a waste of time. I routinely see comments complaining that a $1.99 app is "too expensive" even if a desktop app of similar functionality would easily sell for 10x that price.

Sometimes you get apps where they expect you to buy:

iPhone app = $2 iPad app = $10 (5x) OS X app = $25

It gets out of hand.