[pjc50]

I think this might be a valid concern for any app store, or market as a whole. I'm thinking of Akerloff's "Market for Lemons" paper here, about the difficulty of assessing quality in advance.

Games have a sunk cost of time installing and getting started, often including a tutorial and introduction. This applies even if the game has no monetary cost. If a player finds too much of their time is wasted by bad games, they'll become more conservative and not try new games unless strongly recommended by friends.

The big games continue to do OK, but the "long tail" gets a steeper inflection point - the middle tier of games is hollowed out and the rest of the tail becomes trash and knockoffs.