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Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

9to5mac.com

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Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#281

Post by karaterobot »

gumby wrote: post #202
hitpointdrew wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would think a company like Apple could easily build a system that updated exchange rates daily and could do the simple math on any price. Having "price points" seems arbitrarily and stupid.

Price points smooth the exchange rate fluctuation (how often should the prices be updated? Every second? More often?) and selects for prices that have certain cultural"gravity" as well. I think buyers are more accustomed to and comfortable with "round" or "standard" prices like x.99, x.88, x.95, x.00 etc rather than x.47 or x.31.

It seems like every few minutes would be fast enough, but whatever. It's just weird that, given how important app store purchases are for Apple, they wouldn't just spend any amount of money to make the best possible system: do the currency conversion, snap to those behavioral psychology price points, round to the prettiest unit... the works. Wouldn't everything be on the table for the thing that makes so much money?

Heck, maybe they did do that, and this 900 price point system is actually the right way to do it. Doesn't seem like it, but maybe!

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#282

Post by foota »

not_a_shill wrote: post #223
foota wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really the opposite, it's a form of price discrimination. There's a theory of surplus in economics, which is the extra benefit that someone gets from a transaction above what they would have been willing to pay. If I buy a game that I would have paid $100 for for $50, then I have a "$50" consumer surplus. One the other end, if the producer was willing to let that game sell as low as $40, then they have a produce…

>Now, you could call it subsidizing in that there are probably products that wouldn't be brought to market without the NA market to pay for them, but that's not really "subsidizing". That's every product ever made for profit by a developer in a 1st world country. It's still essentially subsidizing even if you don't like the optics of the word.

It's not subsidizing though.

It would be subsidizing if the effect were that Americans pay more so that people in other countries pay less.

But the alternative to Americans paying more isn't the other people having to pay more, the alternative is the product not existing. (or, alternatively, the company making less profit).

There might be some cases where if the US market didn't exist, the price in another country would go up, but it would happen because a company wasn't able to sustain a lower price with the reduced quantity, and would therefore have to settle for selling less quantity at a higher price.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#283

Post by matheusmoreira »

foota wrote: post #213
alexandre_m wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of all of that seem sketchy to me. It sounds like the main North American market is subsidizing the apps being produced and sold worldwide. Does the same logic apply for other virtual good such as digital music elsewhere?

It's really the opposite, it's a form of price discrimination. There's a theory of surplus in economics, which is the extra benefit that someone gets from a transaction above what they would have been willing to pay. If I buy a game that I would have paid $100 for for $50, then I have a "$50" consumer surplus. One the other end, if the producer was willing to let that game sell as low as $40, then they have a produce…

Excellent. So how do we figure out which regions have the lowest prices so we can pretend to be in that region? Because I sure as hell don't want to pay high prices while some other guy is paying peanuts.

Any attempt at price discrimination should immediately result in arbitrage.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#284

Post by matheusmoreira »

cruano wrote: post #271
foota wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really the opposite, it's a form of price discrimination. There's a theory of surplus in economics, which is the extra benefit that someone gets from a transaction above what they would have been willing to pay. If I buy a game that I would have paid $100 for for $50, then I have a "$50" consumer surplus. One the other end, if the producer was willing to let that game sell as low as $40, then they have a produce…

> People with lower incomes aren't as willing to pay high prices for games. It's a bit deeper than that, let me share my perspective of purchasing software in a developing country. Growing up I remember that video games only picked up in popularity when you could "buy" pirated games. For reference, I'm talking about the Nintendo Wii era and those were about 1-3 USD each for a CD with the pirated version of the game.…

> People don't feel like they are stealing

Yes. That's because they aren't stealing. It's completely normal to feel like you're not stealing when you're not stealing.

The copyright monopolists would very much prefer that you felt bad when you "steal" their imaginary property but the truth is nobody other than the politicians they lobby cares about their opinion on anything.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#285

Post by ksec »

dang wrote: post #165

We changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge... to a third party article I just googled. If there's a better third-party article, we can change it again. Yes, HN has the rule "*Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ), but corporate press releases are so awful…

I agree, especially when original source is completely lacking in context. So basically I think the better article should be submitted.

But in this case I think Appleworld is a poor choice. 9to5[1] are generally much better. Avoid Macrumors and Appleinsider unless it is absolute necessary.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2022/12/06/app-store-pricing-changes-dev...

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#286

Post by gumby »

karaterobot wrote: post #281
gumby wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price points smooth the exchange rate fluctuation (how often should the prices be updated? Every second? More often?) and selects for prices that have certain cultural"gravity" as well. I think buyers are more accustomed to and comfortable with "round" or "standard" prices like x.99, x.88, x.95, x.00 etc rather than x.47 or x.31.

It seems like every few minutes would be fast enough, but whatever. It's just weird that, given how important app store purchases are for Apple, they wouldn't just spend any amount of money to make the best possible system: do the currency conversion, snap to those behavioral psychology price points, round to the prettiest unit... the works. Wouldn't everything be on the table for the thing that makes so much money?…

Yes, that's precisely what the price point system is. I found it kinda weird myself, but upon reflection it makes sense.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#287

Post by dang »

primitivesuave wrote: post #236
dang wrote: post #165

We changed the URL from https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/12/apple-announces-bigge... to a third party article I just googled. If there's a better third-party article, we can change it again. Yes, HN has the rule "*Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter" ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ), but corporate press releases are so awful…

I would always prefer ad-free information directly from the source, and to follow HN guidelines without leaving them open to interpretation (call me an HN fundamentalist I guess).

Corporate press releases are never ad-free—the ads are just inlined. Worse, they're written in a demoralizing bureaucratic antilanguage that makes me, at least, want to bite my head off.

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#289

Post by gumby »

zamadatix wrote: post #278
gumby wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price points smooth the exchange rate fluctuation (how often should the prices be updated? Every second? More often?) and selects for prices that have certain cultural"gravity" as well. I think buyers are more accustomed to and comfortable with "round" or "standard" prices like x.99, x.88, x.95, x.00 etc rather than x.47 or x.31.

Exchange rate fluctuation I think could be handled perfectly fine without price points but the price point "gravities" is a really good reason to use the system. Not sure why it should limit developers to that system but it certainly makes the system attractive/useful for many.

> Not sure why it should limit developers to that system but it certainly makes the system attractive/useful for many.

Because most developers are presumably experts in programming* and whatever the domain of their app is* (game, drawing program, whatever) and not experts in the psychology of pricing (unless it's a pricing app I suppose!).

Now so what? They could allow you to pick a predetermined price or type whatever integer you want into it. But I assume they think consistency makes for a better buying experience, and poor pricing choices are a kind of externality that affects everyone.

I'm slightly dubious of this "externality" really being bad but in this case I'll give the horde of Apple marketing researchers the benefit of the doubt.

* This is HN so the obvious snark has not been inserted

Re: Apple announces ‘upgrade’ to App Store pricing, adding 700 new price points

#290

Post by eYrKEC2 »

pasc1878 wrote: post #154
kybernetyk wrote: post #90

Will this solve the issue that the $49.99 tier equals to a 59.99 EUR price? I get a ton of messages every week by would-be Euro customers complaining why the fuck I am fleecing them with a 59.99 EUR price when the US price is $49.99 and the exchange rate is currently roughly 1:1.

The EUR price includes VAT, Americans have this odd thing of quoting prices without tax which tends to be illegal elesewhere. OK the US does not have a sales type tax on digital goods,

"quoting prices without tax which tends to be illegal elsewhere"

Cui bono?

Personally, I like that US citizens are constantly reminded how much flesh the State is extracting.

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