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.

The big item on everyone’s iPhone 5 wish list is LTE (Long Term Evolution, otherwise known as 4G). However, it’s been widely discussed that the next-gen iPhone won’t be getting LTE. But, today, BGR is reporting that Apple’s carrier partners are testing iPhones with LTE capability.

The evidence supporting this claim comes from an internal iOS test build from one of Apple’s major (unmanned) carrier partners. Deep within the firmware is a property list for LTE. But, don’t get yourself too excited just yet. It may still be too early for Apple to include a 4G LTE modem, but it at least shows us that Apple’s working on it.

Back in April, Apple’s Tim Cook made it clear that the iPhone 5 will not be 4G since the LTE chipsets require a number of design compromises. Apple is not ready or willing to change the design of the iPhone just to accommodate the technology, it would rather wait until another solution arises or it gets small enough to fit.

Since the company already has 56 million iPhones in line for production in the second half of 2011, it may be too late to add the necessary hardware for LTE in the new models. So, perhaps we’ll see LTE in the iPhone after this one.

Apple has been wary of quickly adopting new technologies in the past. Take the original iPhone for example. The first edition was launched with EDGE while other phones out at the time had 3G. So perhaps it’s just taking its time to make sure everything’s perfect before it releases a product with LTE capabilities.

Rumors say that the iPhone 5 will be announced September 7, so until then, we won’t know for sure if this carrier testing is for the fifth-gen iPhone or a later version.