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I don't know - the underlying argument here, that developers need to avoid a race to the bottom isn't particularly new, new to Microsoft [0], or in my opinion convincing. This article seems like a strange mix of a Microsoft marketing piece, and a call for app developer collusion. In other industries it seems almost by definition that the worth of the product is what it's selling for -- .99 cents for most apps. Arguments along the lines of "surely apps are worth more because, c'mon look at the price of coffee," use only emotion based on how much work we see go into those as developers not the value provided to users. It's very easy to blame poor revenue as a marketplace problem rather than a product problem and it's this type of thinking that drives this conclusion rather than proper analysis. A hit driven industry can be brutal but I'm not convinced that the app store is more of one than traditional software, social websites, marketplaces, and games all spring to mind as places where success is very hit driven. Even outside our industry: books, television, movies, music, fashion - these all all hit driven because that is what fits best with where the demand is. * In the television industry most shows have both higher production costs and lower prices than software, does this mean this industry is broken? * Increasingly for app store purchases with higher prices I hear about the apps from avenues other than the Apple featured list (ex drawing apps, higher priced games.) It seems that the marketing channel that is being provided for free is being mistaken for the only way to market. Fundamentally as a developer if I want my app to sell for more money, I should make it bring more value to the customer, not hope for minimum pricing constraints on all apps. It's a great thing as a consumer that distribution and marketing channels like the app store have made it possible for me to use more software, and spend more money on software than I ever did on a pc. [0] See minimum pricing of Xbox live games on both Xbox and Windows Phone |
Author here; definitely not asking for collusion. More specifically, here is what I said:
"Look, you’re a developer – not a rodent in a maze. You should be able to recognize the pattern and the habit-forming behavior from a distance: if you bring iOS’s terrible economics to Windows 8, then Win8 will have similarly terrible economics.
Microsoft set the minimum price of an app in the Windows Store to $1.49 for a reason: to give developers a clean slate on app economics. You want a better opportunity than iOS? Then don’t ship iOS-utility (low-utility) apps with iOS prices on a platform that is purposefully engineered to do better!"
What I'm asking developers to do is: don't ship fart apps and other toys that pollute the iOS app store. Do what Router .CoCPit did and take advantage of WinRT's rich feature set (UPnP support in that particular instance) to deliver apps that are higher utility and thus worth more.
WinRT's native capabilities give developers access to a lot of things that could only be done through traditional desktop apps previously, and combines it with an App Store distribution model that has some new twists on pricing and monetization (expiring in-app purchases, for instance.)
I'm telling developers to take advantage of that and not blindly replicate what they did on iOS or Android.
WinRT will create opportunities for developers to build sustainable businesses off of higher utility, higher price,d and highly targeted applications - apps that are used by 10s of thousands, not millions.
The hit-driven mentality that pervades iOS need not apply here if we realize what we have in front of us.
Does that make more sense?