Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my phone

Re:Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my p... by idunno246 on Thursday April 28, 2016 @03:55PM (#11591490)

At 0.99 though, do you really make much money? Back of the envelop numbers seems that any game at that price point is so underpriced to never be profitable or more than a side project. Especially when an ad driven install costs more than that - relying on the pretty poor app store discovery mechanisms cant drive much traffic. (ive worked for free to play, so maybe we just saw a totally different thing)

The reason IAP became so big is because there was a huge race to the bottom in pricing in mobile, $1 isnt sustainable, so everyone was forced to find alternate revenue streams. If apple got rid of free and <$5, the average quality of the app store could be so much higher

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Re:Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my p... by gearoidoc on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:30PM (#11592055)

Depends on what you define as 'much money'.

I spent 3 months building Hipster CEO and its made me approx $40-45k (as well as leading to other projects). Not a bad return for 3 months work.

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Re:Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my p... by tracker1 on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:22PM (#11591997)

I keep thinking that a virtual arcade model could work well... you get N plays per day for free, but if you want to buy more "coins" you pay like $5 and they carry over...

Each version improves existing games in the arcade and/or adds new ones... you can play your 20 coins/day first, then buy extra if you choose... there's no reason that model couldn't work quite well.

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Re:Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my p... by gearoidoc on Thursday April 28, 2016 @05:58PM (#11592217)

Isn't that exactly what P2P/IAP is?

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Re:Atari co-founder: mobile games make me want to throw my p... by tedmiston on Thursday April 28, 2016 @09:00PM (#11593088)

This is the model most Facebook games use. They might call credits "energy", but whatever.

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