[woliveirajr]

Perhaps dead, but #2 are the ones that I look for. I prefer to pay full price and get a full experience than expend .99 cents so that my little one is able to bake another batch of virtual cakes, then buy again in a week, then....

[potatolicious]

Agreed - I actually play little/no games on my phone/tablet because of the current state of affairs. It's nearly impossible to find a game that isn't just an abstraction of a slot machine.

Square/Enix has done well with some puzzle games - Tomb Raider, Hitman, and Deus Ex all have turn-based puzzle games that are fun and priced on level packs rather than some bottomless pit of microcurrency.

But they are the exception.

I think this is representative of a larger issue in gaming in general - development costs have grown dramatically faster than sales, to the point where the economics of game development have become marginal. Despite blockbuster marketing efforts and millions of copies sold, many games have trouble recouping their costs, not just in mobile-land, but also in traditional strongholds like console games.