[ajscherer]

I think EA's marketing muscle is the reason their games tend to get "discovered", not that gamers are paying any attention to the EA brand (mostly they seem quite hostile towards it).

I'm not sure why people think there is any particularly high amount of noise to break through in the app store. If you write a book and get your local bookstore to carry it, there is almost no chance you are going to sell a lot of copies just by putting it on the shelf. The same would apply to records or PC software if people actually bought either of those.

If you don't have people coming to the app store specifically to buy your app, you aren't going to sell very many copies. That isn't a grim reality of the app store, it's a grim reality of selling anything anywhere.