Abandoned titles...

[synagence]

I think one of the biggest failings in the AppStore is the rapid churn of the apps...

What i mean is that it seems that many (certainly not all) developers and companies are just releasing something and then moving onto the next thing and pretty much leaving the older titles to fall by the side, bug ridden or not

Guitar Rock Tour could be a great game if they could lessen the impact on battery and fix the lag issues that still exist but its not been updated in 2 months so i'm calling it abandoned but gameloft have certainly released other titles.

SimCity has many many faults but i guess its still fairly new
Uno i find has a few problems

Whats people opinions?

Seems like the bigger companies (EA and Gameloft) are particularly bad

 

[Jeremy1026]

Its because of the demographics of the App Store. The market turned it into cheap apps, there isn't money in making one killer application. Since there are so many apps being released daily developers can't focus on one application. It will fall from the new lists so quickly, and when that happens, that application receives so few sales. The money is in constantly pushing out new applications, instead of fixing the old ones.

 

[Rayfire]

Yes it's very sad. I remember the developers of that Urban Tycoon(?) promised that they will roll out a 3D update for their app, but apparently nothing happened.

So as MobileChat (forgive me I had to use them)

There are apps that I had interest with, read the reviews and people claiming it needs an update. I was just waiting for the devs to fix or release the update so that the app will be more stable apparently nothing happened.

Jeremy1026 is right, the market turned into cheap apps. Before there were a lot of complaints about the $9.99 pricing on some apps, people saying they can't afford it, people saying it should be free, people saying it should be half, people giving worst reviews because of the cost - I couldn't see the point why especially if the app was really built flawlessly.

 

[mkrishnan]

No, I think there seems to be some solid evidence that big apps are selling robustly. Just because some small app sells more copies than a Gameloft $10 app doesn't mean the business case for the Gameloft app isn't sound. The amount of attention and sales that Sim City and Rolando generated also argue pretty strongly that iPhone/iPod users are willing to pay $10 for high quality games, even if they are ports of long-time franchises (many people have already essentially played this version of Sim City) or they come from a relatively unestablished gaming house (although ngmoco has its roots at EA).

I do think there's been quite a bit of that, especially with Gameloft. For instance, in Brothers in Arms, it's almost universally agreed that the steering wheel and pedals interface for the jeep is awful. But the thing is that the same company has a very good steering wheel and pedals interface in other games (Asphalt and Ferrari), so you know they have the code to fix it. On the other hand, the idea that video games would be sold and then fixed is still fairly new. Console and handheld games don't get updates. It's only been for the past few years that PC games started getting updates. And they've had their flaws too.

So there is some uncharted waters aspect to it.

 

[DreamPod]

Worse are apps that are *truly* abandoned - removed from the app store, never to be heard from again. I've *bought* a couple games that did that (and weren't forcibly removed or anything, the developers just decided they didn't want to deal with the hassle).

 

[kas23]

I wish Apple would release some numbers about people's buying habits. These numbers may encourage developers that it is worthwhile developing more expensive apps. Or, it may do the opposite. (If so, they best keep quiet.)

 

[firewood]

What i mean is that it seems that many (certainly not all) developers and companies are just releasing something and then moving onto the next thing and pretty much leaving the older titles to fall by the side, bug ridden or not...

The App store hasn't provided any way to monetize upgrades. And perhaps bug fix upgrades do very little for increasing the sales rate for some types of apps. So there's a lot more money to be made in doing a new app (which is important if a developer is trying to keep paying the mortgage in this economy...)

.

 

[kas23]

The App store hasn't provided any way to monetize upgrades. And perhaps bug fix upgrades do very little for increasing the sales rate for some types of apps. So there's a lot more money to be made in doing a new app (which is important if a developer is trying to keep paying the mortgage in this economy...)

.

But there are some people, like myself, who will only download a particular app if a certain function is added (via an upgrade). So, upgrades will cause you to make more money, but I totally agree with your last statement; more apps means more money (unfortunately). Hey, I bet there are some developers out there that have more than one fart app for sale.