subscription billing
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Facebook warms to subscription billing for devs, backs away from Credits as main currency
Subscriptions. It's the wave of the future, man. It's also the wave that Facebook's now riding, as it has just announced plans to enable developers to offer subscription payment services starting in July. In other words, devs that charge monthly for a premium edition of a title will be able to accept automated payments so long as the user continues their subscription. Without question, it's bound to be attractive to prospective app builders, and moreover, Facebook's about-face on Credits as the primary payment method will be met with praise, too. For the past year and a half, Facebook Credits were the way that many items were priced; going forward, devs will be allowed to price things in their own currency, eliminating yet another barrier in the transaction. The status quo 30-70 revenue split isn't going anywhere, however, but Facebook has admitted that it'll "convert any Credit balances into the equivalent amount of value in local currency," according to TechCrunch.
Sub up or lose out: Final Fantasy XIV suspending accounts Thursday
A month ago we reported that Square-Enix is finally ready to transition Final Fantasy XIV to a subscription model. This comes after more than a year of an unlimited free trial for users while the dev team shored up the title following its rocky release. It's important to note that this change happens this week -- specifically on Friday the 6th. Square-Enix's account system has notified players that "the free trial period for the following service will soon end. Please note that after the end date, you will be billed service fees for your automatically continuous options." No player will get charged against their will as the company is suspending all accounts on the 5th so that everyone can have a choice whether to subscribe or not. Until the launch of Final Fantasy XIV's 2.0 patch, the game will be available for a discounted rate of $9.99 a month, assuming that you're sticking with just one character (additional characters are $3 apiece). After 2.0, the subscription cost will increase to the standard rate $12.99/month.
Mac App Store launching on December 13th?
It's no secret that the Mac App Store is launching soon. Jobs himself said that it would go live "within 90 days" back when the iOS-inspired App Store was announced on October 20th -- that's mid January, if the timeframe is carried to its fullest extent. Now we have AppleTell citing an "inside source" claiming that Apple is trying to launch the Mac App Store before Christmas, specifically targeting December 13th while telling developers to have their software ready by Monday, December 6th. Unfortunately, the Mac App Store also requires an OS update to end users to which MacRumors reminds us that the new OS X 10.6.6 has already been seeded to developers. So yeah, that's a pretty aggressive timeline if true and could possibly be kicked off by a press event that would also birth Apple's rumored recurring subscription billing model in support of Rupert Murdoch's The Daily digital newspaper.
