in-app purchase
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Audible removing in-app purchases according to Apple's rules
We've seen quite a bit of squabbling over the subscription and in-app purchase for content rules on the App Store in the past, but generally, things have tended to go Apple's way. Most companies, especially those who really depend on the iOS audience for buying their content, are eventually willing to put up with Apple's 30% cut of any content prices sold through an App Store app. But that's not the case with Audible, sellers of fine audiobooks for your iPhone and iPod touch -- the company has pulled the option to buy content directly through the app in the iOS version's latest update. iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad users can still shop through the mobile store via Safari -- there's even a link inside the app that will open up the online store in your device's browser. So essentially, Audible's just working around Apple's restrictions here. Which make Apple's restrictions look a little silly, but the goal of course is to get that cut off of all content bought in the App Store. It's a shame Audible's customers have to deal with that extra inconvenience, though.
Younger audiences play more freemium games, but 25-34 year-olds pay for them
Flurry's latest post is yet another interesting read on freemium games on the App Store, specifically which age groups are playing them, and which age groups are paying for them. They've used consumer spending data across over 1.4 billion sessions, which means this information is as accurate as you're going to get outside of Apple's own databases. As you can see above, the patterns are interesting. Younger players are the primary users of freemium games, and that's not really surprising -- we've known for a while that the younger generation is downloading and playing more games than anyone else. But that third blue bar is the really interesting one: The people actually paying for freemium games are primarily in the 25-34 age group, right in the middle of the demographics. Sure, they're playing their share of the games, but freemium titles are almost completely funded by that stripe of the age demographic. And when you consider that the average freemium title only really pulls in-app purchases from a small percentage of its audience anyway, that age group becomes even more important. This seems logical, as most successful in-app purchase items are for convenience and time-saving. The 25-34 age group has more money but not as much free time as the younger audience, and thus are willing to shell out for items that help them in the game. But the big question is whether this will change as the years go by. As the younger audience gets older, will they become the main payers for these titles, or just stay the main players? We've only been playing with this model for a few years, and if the younger audience keeps playing without paying, freemium could be a short-lived trend.
TUAW's Daily iPhone App: iQuarterback 2 Pocket Edition
iQuarterback 2 is an excellent little football throwing game from FuzzyCube Software that has you tossing a little pigskin around a football field through multiple game modes. The game recently came out on the iPad, but the iPhone version is brand new. It's just as fun on the small screen, with plenty of targets to go after, and a "Fame" currency that you can use to collect new outfits, accessories, and more. Full Game Center integration lets you check scores and achievements between you and your friends as well. Plus, the price is right -- the game is a free download, and right now this weekend, the in-app purchase to remove ads is just US 99 cents. The iPad version is a little more expensive, but that's what you get for having a bigger screen, right?
Android Market gets in-app billing, your virtual nickels are now spoken for
Google said they were coming this week, and here they are -- Android apps can now have their own miniature storefronts for in-app purchases galore. You'll find Tap Tap Revenge, Comics, Gun Bros, Deer Hunter Challenge HD, WSOP3 and Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe accept your credit card for microtransactions starting this very instant, and Android developers can start building similar functionality into their own creations right now. Head on over to our source link for instructions on how to shake those extra coins out. Don't want to commit to a full transaction yourself? Hit the break for a quick video refresher of how in-app purchases work. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Android in-app purchases hands-on (video)
Today Google announced that Android in-app purchases are coming to the platform and we were able to get a demo by Paul Sebastien of Disney. He showed us how to buy a track pack (Far East Movement, for those who care) in Tap Tap Revenge 4 over 3G on a Nexus S, and using a fake credit card! It's interesting to note that the in-app purchase UI matches the look and feel of the new Android Market and developers can implement the functionality in a few simple steps. In-app purchases should start rolling out in various Android apps this spring. In the meantime, take a look at our video after the break.
Catan app adds Seafarers expansion with in-app purchase
The great Catan iOS game has added in its first expansion, available via an in-app purchase, and it's based on the Seafarers of Catan expansion from the original German board game. The expansion introduces ships and shipping routes to the kingdom-building simulation, and it includes 10 different scenarios to build ships in, as well as pirates, a Gold River tile and some extra victory cards with different bonuses. The expansion content is US$3.99 inside the app, but even if you don't want to shell out the extra four bucks, one of the scenarios is included, so you can at least see how it changes the game. The Catan app itself has been critically acclaimed, and I really like this model of releasing content -- it seems like a nice solid way of both making sure that content updates are significant improvements to an app, as well as allowing developers to get their own reward for releasing that content. Hopefully we'll see some more apps, outside of the board game model, take this approach in the future. [via TouchArcade]
Angry Birds developers to launch 'Bad Piggy Bank' mobile payment system
After millions of downloads of their popular game Angry Birds and a plan to take over the gaming world, Rovio is looking to get a little more from users; they now want to implement a mobile payment system inside the game itself. In an effort to grab a few more bucks from impulsive buyers/gamers they are launching Bad Piggy Bank, which with just a touch of a button will let customers make in-app game purchases without a credit card -- the price of anything they buy will just be added to their monthly cell phone bill. Rovio is based in Helsinki, Finland and is initially putting the payment system in place on Android with Elisa, the country's biggest telecom provider, but expects to roll the service out worldwide sometime in 2011. While Apple allows users to upgrade 'in-app' from free to paid versions and the buying and unlocking of special features, I do question if they would ever allow something like Bad Piggy Bank to purchase other Rovio games without a link going back to the App Store. However, I can say that if it were in place I would probably have bought every version of Angry Birds by now, since I cannot seem to stop playing it.
Rock Band Reloaded out now on App Store, Puzzle Quest 2 out soon
Two big sequels have hit the App Store in the past day or so -- as the holidays are here, more big name titles will be forthcoming for sure. First up, EA has released Rock Band Reloaded, a new version of the popular Rock Band music game series for iOS. This one plays generally the same as the first game as you have to tap certain notes on the screen as they slide down the board, but there are quite a few new options, including new songs (15 now, more free tracks coming soon, and more available via in-app purchase) and a new vocal mode that allows you to sing into the iPhone's microphone. The game is also updated for Retina Display, and it has awards and achievements to earn, though strangely, EA hasn't embraced Game Center quite yet. The iPhone version is $4.99, and the iPad HD version is $9.99. And Namco should have Puzzle Quest 2 on the App Store, though at the moment I can't find it out there. The puzzler/RPG title is terrific (I really enjoyed it on Xbox Live Arcade), and it looks like Namco has decided to go with a full release for $9.99 rather than going episodic as they did with the first title. Either way, the game is great -- hopefully it'll be back out on the App Store soon.
OpenFeint announces in-app content service, infrastructure to support freemium games
Social gaming network OpenFeint has finally unveiled its OpenFeint X service, which will allow developers on the App Store (and a few other mobile platforms) to add cloud-based microtransaction content to their games on top of Apple's own in-app purchase service. This is apparently a system that lives outside of Apple's own store, and allows developers to quickly and easily add in-app content without having to go through Apple's approval system. If that sounds confusing, it's because the system is still so new -- only a few developers have worked with it so far (though we're supposed to see it running in popular titles like Fruit Ninja soon), and the updates for providing virtual currency and goods aren't out yet. But this is the next step for OpenFeint -- after Apple released Game Center, OpenFeint's plan was to provide even more services on top of the Game Center functionality, and with the rise of freemium apps on the store lately, delivering this content is an important thing for developers to do. To kick off the new service, OpenFeint is holding what its calling a "million dollar challenge" -- the first 100 developers to sign up and use OpenFeint X will be able to earn up to $10,000 without sharing any revenue (which basically means OpenFeint is giving away $1 million of the money it would have made). After that, developers who use the service will enter a revenue sharing plan -- if you're a developer, you can find more details about that on the official website. This won't change things for most end users -- it likely won't matter to you whether you click one of Apple's buttons to make an in-app purchase or use code from another company. But it will be an interesting choice for developers to make. And given what we've heard about the growing revenues from in-app purchases, a service like this is showing up at exactly the right time.
Report: In-app purchases to overtake download revenues by 2013
Here's an interesting report from Juniper Research. According to their work, mobile app revenues will reportedly grow from the current US $6 billion to a whopping $11 billion by 2015. And the majority of that revenue will come not from the standard download fee, but instead from in-app purchases, according to Juniper. The firm claims that in-app purchase revenue will top one-off download fees by 2013. That seems hard to believe, given my current anecdotal usage, but there's no question that in-app purchases are growing by leaps and bounds as a form of sizable revenue for app developers. Jupiter's report also says that the biggest problem facing mobile app growth is just plain discovery -- with so many apps out there, it's hard for users to find new apps that they like, so what you tend to see is clumps of apps getting popular rather than users going out and finding their own favorites. Services like OpenFeint and Game Center have certainly helped to share information about new apps, and of course sites like ours try to spotlight as many apps as we can. But with a store full of hundreds of thousands of apps in it, it's tough to let more than a few hundred really shine. Maybe as we move forward, developers and Apple will come up with better solutions to help do that.
TUAW's Daily App: Astronut
You may have already heard about the Iconfactory's new game Astronut, but just in case you haven't, we'll happily be the ones to tell you. From the makers of Ramp Champ and Twitterrific comes a game that's sort of a mashup between Dizzypad, Captain Ludwig and Doodle Jump. You play a little astronaut bouncing from planet to planet and trying to make his way up the screen, all while avoiding aliens and other traps and troubles along the way. Astronut's a little more forgiving than most of the other "jump"-style games. Not only are there three sections of your heart to go through, you can pick up more hearts, shields and other items along the way. You also get a "boost" that allows you to invincibly fly past any number of bad guys or enemies (as long as you're pointed in the right direction). As a result, the game is a whole lot of fun to play. Rather than trying to time out each jump perfectly, you constantly bounce around the map, ascending and sometimes even landing huge jumps for bonus points. There's Game Center integration in the form of leaderboards and achievements as well, so there's quite a bit of game here to play. There are 24 levels total, and the first four are included in a free download that comes more than recommended -- it's a lot of fun. If you like it, you can buy the rest of the game for US$1.99 via an in-app purchase. The Iconfactory never disappoints when it comes to well-executed, solid designs, and Astronut is another great app in their growing library of quality App Store titles.
Flurry: In-app purchases generating lots more revenue per user
Analytics firm Flurry has announced that in-app purchases are generating $14.66 per user per year in June of 2010, which is a few times larger than it has been in the past. Previously to 2010, the games tracked were generating only a few bucks per user per year, but in January the total jumped to around $9, and it's now in the double digits. Flurry says that money doesn't include ad revenue -- it's strictly profit from in-app purchases, either unlocking features or selling virtual goods. Whenever you talk about making money on free games, you have to talk about Ngmoco -- that company famously choose "freemium" as its business plan, and business appears to be good. Exec Simon Jeffery confirmed exactly that at a conference earlier this week -- while he can't discuss actual revenue, he says things are going well. And of course other companies who already know how to make money from free games (like Zynga, whose Farmville recently released on the iPhone) will see this as a big green light for joining Apple's platform. The revenue per user isn't the only important stat here -- Apple also has plenty of users to offer up. Disney's free Toy Story 3 app released recently, and has already picked up 1.7 million users, a good number of which probably bought the 99 cent in-app game offered up. Lots and lots of users spending a surprising amount of money inside their apps means lots and lots of revenue for both iPhone developers and Apple.
Tapulous making a million a month off the App Store
Well, even with rampant piracy, review craziness, and that funky approval process, it's good to hear that someone can still make a truckload of cash on the App Store. According to Reuters, that someone is Tapulous, who is apparently making almost a million dollars a month thanks to twenty million downloads of their Tap Tap Revenge game. We recently talked to Andrew Lacy on the release of said game back in October, and he told us that the game's in-app purchase features (you get the game for cheap, and then have a chance to buy lots of extra music to play in packs and bundles) would be the "first big test of in-app commerce at a much grander scale." Looks like the test was a success. Of course, there's not too many details on how exactly that million dollars comes in -- I'm sure there was a flurry of sales right around the release of the app (as press was dropping), and you'd expect them to be a little higher during the holidays (sales of video games usually are, no matter what platform you're talking about). So it's not completely proven that this kind of income is necessarily sustainable. But still, it's good to hear from the folks at Tapulous that someone can release a game and roll in the cash from Apple's platform.
TUAW Poll: Do you use in-app purchasing?
One of my favorite apps is Night Stand [iTunes Link]. This app contains a variety of different themes (clock displays) and has an alarm, pretty basic but I use it every day. Last night when I ran it, I found that there was a new clock theme named Glow for in-app purchase. It looked interesting but there was no way to find out the cost without hitting the 'buy' button which I did. Luckily, before it was purchased, a confirmation screen came up with the price of US0.99. This was a bit surprising since US0.99 was the full price of the app which already came with six themes. This got me thinking about whether in-app purchasing will work or not, or if there is any rhyme or reason to pricing? I wouldn't buy one-sixth of the value of an app for full price and I wonder who would? Last week we ran a story on how in-app buying is not working out so well for Pangea. I wonder if it's working out for anyone?My feeling is that iPhone apps are looked upon differently than full Macintosh applications. They are cheaper and tend to do one thing only. Night Stand is a clock, it doesn't purport to be more than be a clock. So what should a new clock theme be worth?I've started viewing apps as casual purchases and at the price I don't expect more than one thing, which if done well, is worth the buck. So I'm not seeing the value of highly priced in-app sales. I can see the reason for some expensive apps charging for major functionality increases, such as Navigon when they added a $US20 live traffic option to their $US90 Mobile Navigation app, but that seems to be the exception and not the rule.I would guess that extra gaming levels would be an expected revenue source, but I just don't see the majority of people spending enough time with a game app to run out of levels and buy more.Take the poll below and then comment on your feelings on in-app purchasing. Will this turn out to be something big, or is it just another solution looking for a problem? %Poll-34880%
TUAW interviews OpenFeint's Peter Relan, Net Jacobsson, and Jason Citron
Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron are the folks with their names on Aurora Feint, but as Danielle told us in an interview a while ago, Peter Relan is the real mastermind behind the growing Feint empire. Not only did he put the two together in an idea lab, but he's one of the driving forces behind the OpenFeint enterprise. Under his oversight, the Feint folks have swelled to become one of the major forces behind iPhone gaming (and thus, behind the iPhone's app ecosystem itself).Netanel "Net" Jacobsson is a newer addition -- he's previously worked with Sony Ericsson on their mobile devices and Facebook on their own growing app empire, and now he's arrived at OpenFeint to help them use the lessons he's learned at the biggest online social networks around on their social software. Get the sense of how big this is yet? Relan, Jacobsen, and Citron all have pretty big ideas about where iPhone gaming is going, and as 3.0 comes down the pike and introduces a whole set of new features from Apple, they're in the best seat they can be in to do exactly what they want to do.TUAW sat down with the three last week, and chatted about iPhone 3.0 and why it's such a big deal for developers, how they're going to approach microtransactions (carefully), and what's coming next for OpenFeint now that they've rounded up a whole stable full of developers implementing their backbone. Click "read more" to continue.
Two different services offering plans to developers for push, microtransactions
With iPhone OS 3.0 only having been released yesterday, two big companies are already angling to be developers' go-to for setting up push notifications and other online services for the new apps. OpenFeint was the first service we've heard about -- they have been offering social networking connections to developers for a while, but with the new firmware release, they tell us that they're also hosting options for both push notifications and microtransactions to their stable of app developers. That stable includes apps like Pocket God and Aurora Feint (Danielle Cassley of both Aurora Feint and OpenFeint told us a while back that she was very excited at the prospect of microtransactions with 3.0), and both of those games, as well as others on the service, are planning to include push notifications with "social challenges" -- you'll challenge a friend to complete a certain goal in game, and then get notified when they meet that goal. Look for those new features in an OpenFeint app near you.And OpenFeint isn't the only service jockeying for developers' attention -- Urban Airship is also making a bid to host push notifications for iPhone game developers. They've landed one of the first push-enabled games, Tap Tap Revenge, and are looking to offer push to more devs, along with in-app purchase support as well. They don't quite have the library together that OpenFeint already does, but their service integrates, they say, in just a matter of hours, and their aim is to make it "brain dead easy" for developers.The floodgates are open, and we're sure to see more and more companies jump in on hosting plans like this in the future. Prepare to be pushed.
