Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanalltogether | Hacker News Reader

I genuinely hate how apple has pushed microtransactions as the only viable route for app/game demos on their platform. I want to try out an app or game for free, and then decide if I want to purchase the full thing or not. This is how games always worked, and this is how Steam / PS3 / Xbox work.

The infrastructure apple provides however forces demos to live in the same category as microtransaction games, and as a result, the best games either get lost in the sea of free stuff, or completely forgo a demo and just list in the paid section. Quality content doesn't stand a chance.

View on HN

Apple hasn't pushed this. If anything they are pushing quality paid titles and trying to given them lots of visibility. The market however has spoken.

> Apple hasn't pushed this.

Of course they have, otherwise they would have long ago provided ways for paid apps to offer demos. There are lots of quality apps that would be rescued from the freemium category if Apple provided this as a distribution feature.

You can have the demo experience you're describing by unlocking the substantial content as a single IAP.

It's not Hollywoods fault we got Transformers 3, it's the 50 million people who bought tickets to Transformers 2.

And the reason we got Transformers 3 is because the 50 million people will buy whats being made available for them and pushed.

Keep in mind that via Spotify's subscription model it's only something like 20% of the what users listen to thats chart music. The rest is outside the normal popular genres.

So it's a chicken and an egg discussion.

No the 50 million people chose to consume Transformers 2 instead of John Carter, they don't just buy anything the studios shove in their face.

They buy what they are presented with and whats considered popular. How can they know up front whats good and bad?

Thats how the movie industry still works that how the music industry used to work.

I bet you Netflix show the same tendency of having more people see non-chart movies than if they had to pay for it.

Nice to be downvoted without any argument as to why.

As to why you're downvoted: HN has become rather eager to downvote. I'd even say toxic, because a few months ago I were downvoted and I knew I deserved it. Nowadays it's because I or someone else has an unpopular (but well reasoned) opinion. It's frustrating, not because I care for my Karma but because I'd like to have a discourse beyond agreeing on the popular opinion.

Yeah. I thought down votes was for things that was factually wrong, trolling or ruining a discussion not for disagreement.

Which is why I really wished down votes came with a requirement to quality why you are being down voted.

He's probably been downvoted because his entire chain of comments boils down to "Hurr durr, people R sheep!"

Funny.

Here I though I was making an argument that when people where given the freedom to choose without it having financial implications they would in fact choose differently than when they have to pay for it and a "mistake" means more.

People think a lot of things. Doesn't mean they're right.

No you would normally look at the evidence or an argument. I have provided some, now it's your turn.

And now to complete the conversational loop and point out the problems of categorizing demos via IAP, I point you right back to my original comment.

How can you possibly reconcile the idea that demos would somehow beat out micro transactions if only they had their own category despite the fact that they fail living side by side with microtransactions?

beat out?

Discoverability is what the person is talking about, and it would indeed improve discoverability.

You do realize that a full unlock via IAP is basically the shareware approach?

Just because something has IAP doesn't make it bad. One has to look at how the app uses IAP instead.

>otherwise they would have long ago provided ways for paid apps to offer demos.

Like LITE version and Pro version of an app? Yeah, Why don't aht exist? Oh wait, it does. The devs just choose to make a free app and then have the pro version as in app purchase.

But I guess the devs doing it that way is also Apples fault. Somehow everything is Apples fault according to you people.

No, the goal is to have only _one_ version of an app, with a time limit or limit to the # of times it can launch, etc., which Apple doesn't have any provision for. IAP for content is the next best thing, otherwise you have to maintain two separate apps, which is objectively terrible.

Apple is 100% guilty of this. Of course consumers will prefer free or very cheap software, but what most of them don't realise is that software is STILL very expensive to produce and maintain, so there will be a perverse incentive to extract value in other ways.

The solution is very simple: ban buying gems, virtual dollars and all that crap.

Apple have total control of the appstore, so it is their fault. If you could sideload games - then it would have been different because niche games could use other means of getting on devices (like humble bundle for android)

Apple didn't do this. Companies wanting to make money since so few people actually paid for games up front did this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com