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IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

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Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#51

Post by CJefferson »

samatman wrote: post #49
cooldeal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Android atleast you can sell the app from your website or any market. With iPhone apps there is no chance of that at all. (Cydia doesn't really count).

Why doesn't Cydia count? I've never understood the logic here. Since the Supreme Court has determined that jailbreaking and alternate markets are legal, what does it matter that Apple would prefer you didn't install it? But then, I've spent probably 30 bucks and counting on the Cydia store.

Cydia doesn't count because Apple keeps blocking holes which allow jailbreaking, so with new devices, there can be quite a long time period before you can get back into Cydia.

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#52

Post by gyardley »

swombat wrote: post #43
msy wrote: post #15

Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. Amazon, Apple et al are becoming new middle men of the digital marketplace. Want to sell content online? If you want mass market exposure we'll have 30-70% of the revenue from the sweat of your brow and you better thank us for the privilege. I wonder how long until they band together and form a lobby group called the Digital Content Providers Association of America.

And, like all middlemen, they very much deserve their cut. What are you going to do with that pile of books in your cellar if there's no bookshop to sell them for you? Open your own single-book store? If you build a store, you should certainly get a healthy cut of what you sell through your store.

Of course middlemen deserve a healthy cut.

The issue here isn't whether Amazon deserves a cut, it's whether their incentives are aligned with the developers who use their platform. Amazon's control over pricing allows it to make decisions beneficial to the platform as a whole but potentially harmful to the individual developer.

Incentives are never going to be perfectly aligned, but letting the developer control pricing would make them a lot more aligned than they are now.

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#53

Post by jrockway »

_delirium wrote: post #29
jonknee wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can try other pricing strategies, it's just that you need to give Amazon the lowest list price. No different than Apple really, requiring your in-app content to match the lowest pricing available. Amazon and [to a much greater extent] Wal-Mart play these games with physical goods too. It's just you never get to read the terms and big distributors don't complain publicly.

You do hear complaints from smaller publishers a lot w.r.t. physical goods, and their troubles are one reason I hope this doesn't catch on. They're left with the poor choice of selling through booksellers, or selling direct to consumers at a reasonable price, but can't do both. If their break-even price is, say, $8, then they might want to sell it for list $9.99. But then Amazon wants it for $5 wholesale (half list),…

Can't you just give people 50% off coupons?

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#54

Post by foob »

Amazon steeply discounts a large chunk of its Appstore catalog (imagine: "our top 100-rated games are all 75% off!"). Some developers will probably win in this scenario, but some developers -- most likely, those near the bottom of the list -- will lose, not gaining enough sales to offset the loss in revenue per sale. Amazon benefits the most, because it captures all the customer goodwill generated by such a promotion.

There might be some chance of Amazon doing something like this, but it is important to point out that even in this case the developers of those 100 apps will on average be making more money. Amazon is trying to optimize prices to maximize their own profit and in doing so they also increase it for the developer. Lets look at an example...

Say that Amazon sells n copies of a game per day at the list price of $1. Then they make .3n dollars per day and the writer of the app makes .7n dollars. Now if they lower the price by 75% like the author suggests and sell m copies per day then the app writer makes .2m dollars and Amazon makes .05m dollars. Moneywise, this obviously only makes sense for Amazon to do if m > n6 because they would be losing money otherwise. If this condition is met then the app writer will make at least .2n6=1.2n that day and their profit increased by at least 71% if Amazon was smart about their decision.

As long as Amazon changes a price such that it increases their own gain then it also increases the gain of the developer. In the price range from .2/.7=.286 to 1.0 of the list price this is trivially true because your profits are directly proportional to theirs in that range. In that case you have a minimum increase in profit of 0% but will likely see something higher. In the range from 0.0 to 0.2 of the list price Amazon is losing money to pay you so I'm assuming that this isn't going to happen. In the range of .2 through .286 things get a little more complicated. Look at this plot (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Plot%5B100*%28%28.3%2F%...) which shows the absolute minimum percent increase in profit that the developer sees compared to list price given that Amazon isn't losing money on the decision. If Amazon thinks that it's a good idea to sell your app for 78% off then you're probably about to start making a lot more money than you would otherwise.

I understand that at first glance .2 of list price sounds scary, but as I've shown above the developer also makes an increased profit whenever Amazon does. This doesn't totally negate the proposition that Amazon might take a loss on your app to help sales elsewhere but they could just as easily take a loss elsewhere to help sales of your app. On average you'll still be making more money. I've assumed throughout this that Amazon knows how to adjust prices to maximize their own profits but I have a feeling that they're pretty good at this. They have a treasure trove of data on people's shopping habits that I can't even begin to comprehend and they're just trying to apply what they've learned to an app store.

tl;dr: The pricing policy actually increases your profits compared to a .7/.3 split at list price as long as Amazon is acting in a way that increases their own profits. It sounds scary at first but it's actually pretty cool that you can have a company as experienced at this stuff as Amazon optimize the price of your app so that you make as much profit as possible.

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#55

Post by mattmcknight »

cubicle67 wrote: post #7
joelackner wrote: post #5

does anyone know how the free app-a-day promotion is being handled? does amazon pay the developer 20% of the price for each free download?

point 9: "Furthermore, Amazon dictates that developers cannot set their list price above the lowest list price "available or previously available on any Similar Service." In other words, if you want to sell your content anywhere else, you cannot prevent Amazon from slashing the price of your game by setting a high list price. And if you ever conduct even a temporary price promotion in another market, you must permane…

"And if you ever conduct even a temporary price promotion in another market, you must permanently lower your list price in Amazon's market." seems to not be entirely accurate with regards to the prior statement "cannot set their list price above the lowest list price available or previously available on any Similar Service".

If the _list_ price on the similar service doesn't change, but there is a temporary promotion on the similar service, this condition would seem to _not_ apply.

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#56

Post by JoachimSchipper »

beeeph wrote: post #41
JoachimSchipper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has already closed this loophole, and if this becomes widespread others will too.

How did they close it? This is how all my iOS apps generate revenue. They're all free with In-App Purchases. It works great. Also, why would anyone consider this a "loophole"?

Apple are taking their 30% cut, right? I'm not sure how Amazon's terms interact with in-app purchases, but presumably they've thought of this.

If the NYT sells an app with bundled one-year subscription, Apple gets 30%; if the NYT sells (well, sold) an app and a separate one-year subscription, Apple gets nothing. If the original app is sufficiently useless, this "in-app purchase" is clearly just a way of not paying Apple.

(Apple is not free of blame in that particular fiasco, and they take quite a large cut. But taking an equal cut in either case is not necessarily unreasonable.)

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#57

Post by foob »

foob wrote: post #54

Amazon steeply discounts a large chunk of its Appstore catalog (imagine: "our top 100-rated games are all 75% off!"). Some developers will probably win in this scenario, but some developers -- most likely, those near the bottom of the list -- will lose, not gaining enough sales to offset the loss in revenue per sale. Amazon benefits the most, because it captures all the customer goodwill generated by such a promotion…

There is one serious problem with this reasoning though. A realistic scenario might be that somebody decides that they want to buy your app and then compares the price at a couple of different app stores and decides to buy it at Amazon because there's a 10% discount but would have otherwise bought it elsewhere. In this case Amazon would have gained profit from the discount while you would have lost it.

How this ultimately plays out for the developer is hard to predict because it depends on how the market develops. If the Amazon store becomes very successful and their audience shops there regardless of whether or not there is a discount then this effect will be small. The terms guarantee that users will only find discounts at Amazon and this will make them less likely to check other stores when they find an app at Amazon even if it's full price. If that's how customers behave then the optimization will stay more favorable for the developer.

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#59

Post by Retric »

swombat wrote: post #43
msy wrote: post #15

Say hello to the new boss, same as the old boss. Amazon, Apple et al are becoming new middle men of the digital marketplace. Want to sell content online? If you want mass market exposure we'll have 30-70% of the revenue from the sweat of your brow and you better thank us for the privilege. I wonder how long until they band together and form a lobby group called the Digital Content Providers Association of America.

And, like all middlemen, they very much deserve their cut. What are you going to do with that pile of books in your cellar if there's no bookshop to sell them for you? Open your own single-book store? If you build a store, you should certainly get a healthy cut of what you sell through your store.

10% is a healthy cut 30% when they are not subsidizing the platform is a slap in the face. 30% and they get to restrict what you do with other platforms AND control your price structure is insane.

Under these terms you any developer that uses Amazon marketplace is stupid. They might make slightly more money in the sort term but you are giving up huge long term gains.

PS: I am seriously considering boycotting Amazon over this.

Re: IGDA about the Amazon Android Appstore: just say no.

#60

Post by irons »

samatman wrote: post #49
cooldeal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Android atleast you can sell the app from your website or any market. With iPhone apps there is no chance of that at all. (Cydia doesn't really count).

Why doesn't Cydia count? I've never understood the logic here. Since the Supreme Court has determined that jailbreaking and alternate markets are legal, what does it matter that Apple would prefer you didn't install it? But then, I've spent probably 30 bucks and counting on the Cydia store.

The jailbreak ruling wasn't from the Supreme Court, it was from the US copyright office, which found that jailbreaking a smartphone was a legitimate exception to DMCA prohibitions on using technical means to beat copy protection.

The ruling means you can't be sued for jailbreaking. It doesn't give you a constitutional right to an unlocked phone, and it doesn't oblige Apple or AT&T or Google or HTC or whomever to support a jailbroken device. It certainly doesn't impair their ability to use technical measures (aka, fixing bugs) to impair your ability to jailbreak.

Since no one had ever been sued for jailbreaking (and similar policy was not applied to, for instance, the PS3), the practical effect of the copyright ruling was close to nil.

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