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Apple is urging some app developers to increase their prices


Earlier this year, Nintendo publicly attacked the App Store (and its surrounding industry of indie developers), claiming that “the value of games does not matter” to Apple or those developers putting up games on the App Store. One UK developer, on the other hand, had the opposite experience in its dealings with Apple.
Somethin’ Else, the studio behind well-received iOS audio game Papa Sangre, was approached by Apple and encouraged to raise its price prior to release, according to studio director Steve Ackerman. In a speech at the Edinburgh Interactive conference, Ackerman said that Apple contacted the company and said that it was considering promoting the title in the App Store and asked the studio for its selling price. When Ackerman responded with “maybe ₤1.99,” in his words Apple responded with “You must be joking.” Apple called Papa Sangre a premium app and claimed that it was worth more “than the price of coffee.”
The studio obliged Apple’s suggestion and debuted Papa Sangre at ₤3.99, which following Apple’s price points would equate to $5 on the US App Store. The game has sold over 50,000 copies at this premium price.
The move is a direct counter to the “race to the bottom,” where the proliferation of competitive App Store games has created downward price pressure, forcing app makers to sell games at 99 cents or adopt the freemium model, where the game is given away for free and a small percentage of players buy virtual goods in order to subsidize all users’ experiences.
Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata used his keynote speech at the Game Developers Conference back in March to attack this trend. He defended the “premium value” of games that sell at traditional price points, such as $60 for consoles and $30 or $40 for handhelds.
In the meantime, the debate over game pricing has spread from the development community to gamers themselves. The influential gaming-oriented web comic Penny Arcade posited recently that if two gamers spent $40, but one spent it all on the App Store and the other bought one Nintendo 3DS game, the App Store gamer could very well have more fun.
The case of Somethin’ Else suggests the possibility that Apple may be trying to fight against the “race to the bottom” in game pricing, either to respond to Nintendo’s criticism or to shift consumers’ perceptions on prices in the App Store.

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