I work for Future Games of London. Whilst I don’t agree with charging up front for a game that is set-up for the freemium model (My bosses, the company directors sometimes do this, but I don’t think it should be that way), I can tell you that in the case of Grabatron we sold it as a paid only app with no IAPs at launch (xmas 2011), we only made %10 of what it cost to develop it. Put simply, people on the app store are no longer willing to pay up front for a game, we cannot get the cost to cover our development even when we only ask a dollar for it.

However we re-jigged the game a little, added some IAPs (just currency) and a variety of new ships, upgrades and weapons (we made whole new content for the game) the put it back out at a free price tag and that time we started making the sort of money that we needed to earn back our development costs.

We have reached a place in the app market where not enough people will not take a risk on a game that do not know and pay for it up front for it. We simply cannot make our money back when we develop a game and try to sell it like that. It doesn’t work.

Therefore our next best option is to give it away for free and to let the real fans of the game (typically around %5 of the total people playing the game) to pay for upgrades in game. We always balance it so that it can be played without paying, we know that %95 of people will never pay, but we still need them to like the game and spread the word or we would never find the small group of guys that really go for it and sling some cash our way.

To those of you who think we are greedy, I can tell you that it is laughable. None of us guys got into making games for money, we are all smart guys, if we had wanted money we would have gotten real jobs

It seems that this is the way that games are going now, but it doesn’t need to be a bad thing. Look at arcade machines, you dont think they were designed to eat your money too, you dont think they were designed to get you into it then ask you for money? There were plenty of great arcade hits.

Anyhow, hit me back if you want to discuss.

Thanks,
Kris Skellorn

I also think that MS may have it right with their market for windows phone. Most apps have a free version with limited functionality and then you can upgrade to the paid. Some Android ones do this too. It is not a bunch of little charges here and there, it is just “Ok, want it now?”

It’s also important to realize that this poll is only going to be answered by the more informed in the Android community. J.Q. Android-User wants all apps to be free and is unfortunately more likely to be persuaded to buy something once they like the app for more money than simply pay for the app to begin with.

Whether you pay upfront or as you go, they bleed you. Example: every crappy video game I shelled out $60 for and was non refundable the moment I opened the wrapper. Or every $5 mobile game I didn’t realize would be endlessly repetitive until the sixteenth minute.