Developers Weigh In On End of App Store “Gold Rush” Era

Mobile users are downloading more apps than ever before, but an increasing number of them are free — are developers out of luck trying to sell their apps for even 99 cents in the age of freemium?

Tapity developer Jeremy Olson delivered a crushing blog post Wednesday for those of us who prefer to purchase our apps without having to contend with advertising or in-app purchases. Could it be curtains for paid apps?

“I have been talking to a lot of the most successful app makers out there — who many would assume are millionaires off their top apps — and I’m hearing the same thing again and again: people just aren’t buying as many apps anymore,” Olson writes.

“By piecing together a few anecdotes I have heard, the top ten best-selling apps are selling roughly 25 percent as many copies as they did a year ago,” the developer continues. “If a number five app sold 16,000 copies a day a year ago, number five might only sell 4,000 copies a day today.”

While those are still respectable numbers, the data does paint a disturbing trend in how mobile users “purchase” their apps. Without the ability to try before you buy, users are left with little choice but to stick to free apps, then purchase upgrades in-app for those they actually like.

The folks at productivity app maker Readdle have also chimed in on the subject, and they view the problem from a different angle: Developers should focus on building products, not apps.

“The value of a product goes beyond your device,” writes Readdle’s Denys Zhadanov. “It allows you to experience things in real world. Would you want to keep your passwords? Would you want to keep your notes or documents? Would you want to get your cash back by scanning and faxing the restaurant bill? The answer is yes.”

Both blog posts are well worth a read in their entirety, but the bottom line appears to be that the “gold rush” days of the App Store have wound down, and now developers must find new ways to thrive in a market filled with casual users looking for the next Candy Crush. Here’s hoping they do…

 

Founding Xbox engineer: last 5 years “painful to watch”

Nat Brown says machine “Coasting on past momentum. Failing to innovate”

Nat Brown, an engineer who joined the Xbox engineering team in its infancy in 1999 and claims to have given it its name, has penned an explosive declamation on the path which the brand is taking, calling the last five years, and “the last year in particular,” “painful to watch.”

Brown’s post, on his personal blog, reveals that, whilst a multimedia experience was always a vital part of the long term plans for Xbox, it has taken centre-stage at the cost of gaming. Specifically, Brown feels that support for smaller developers and digital distribution has been dangerously lacking.

“My gripe, my head-smack, is not that the broader content/entertainment business isn’t where you want to go with a living-room-connected device. It absolutely is,” writes Brown. “Indeed, this was the point of Xbox, that was why it was the Trojan horse for the living room, where we could land and be welcomed by millions of console customers with more hardware and better software and network connectivity than the non-console devices (webtv, cable set-top-boxes) we had been pursuing.

“The past 5 years, and the last year in particular, have been simply painful to watch. Coasting on past momentum. Failing to innovate and failing to capitalize on innovations like Kinect.”

Nat Brown

“No, more and better content was always the point and the plan. My gripe is that, as usual, Microsoft has jumped its own shark and is out stomping through the weeds planning and talking about far-flung future strategies in interactive television and original programming partnerships with big dying media companies when their core product, their home town is on fire, their soldiers, their developers, are tired and deserting, and their supply-lines are broken.

“Xbox’s primary critical problem is the lack of a functional and growing platform ecosystem for small developers to sell digitally-/network-distributed (non-disc) content through to the installed base of xBox customers, period. Why can’t I write a game for Xbox tomorrow using $100 worth of tools and my existing Windows laptop and test it on my home Xbox or at my friends’ houses?”

Going on to rail against the $10,000 cost for registering as an Xbox developer, Brown decries the lack of ecosystem features seen on explosive platforms like iOS, where low-barriers to entry have seen a wealth of content driving both system popularity and breadth of choice.

“Why can’t I then distribute it digitally in a decent online store, give up a 30 per cent cut and strike it rich if it’s a great game, like I can for Android, for iPhone, or for iPad,” he asks. “This is where indie developers have found they can go in order to not make money on xBox, despite an installed base of 76 million devices. Microsoft, you are idiotic to have ceded not just indie game developers but also a generation of loyal kids and teens to making games for other people’s mobile devices.”

Brown’s disappointment isn’t limited to the machine’s poor support for smaller developers, however, he’s also angry with the Dashboard UI, which he calls “creaky, slow, and full-of-s***.”

“These are the 2 fronts Microsoft is going to lose on in the living room battle with Android 38, iOS,” continues Brown. “It’s not going to be based on whether they have (a more expensive) Netflix, whether they have original TV/video content or interactive kids television shows which integrate with Kinect. They will lose unless these two things are sorted out well and quickly.

“Microsoft is living in a naive dream-world. I have heard people still there arguing that the transition of the brand from hardcore gamers to casual users and tv-uses was an intentional and crafted success. It was not. It was an accident of circumstance that Microsoft is neither leveraging nor in control of.”

Nat Brown left Microsoft in early 2000.

 

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