Rumor: Apple considering a $19.99 price point for App Store games?

I would gladly pay $20 for a good quality game, but unfortunately, up to this point there has not been a game in the app store that is worth $20. I really want an old school Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy game, I'd buy those in a heartbeat. That style of play seems perfect for the iPod Touch/iPhone.

I'd pay $19.95 for Q*bert!

I would not buy a $19.99 game for an iPhone. Period. So far, $4.99 has been my top limit (7 Cities) and I felt guilty about that one!

On the DS and PSP (and Wii and PS3 and XBox) only big box developers are allowed. The little guy is squeezed out and unable to play. Also, on those platforms, the money for the makers of the platform is in the games: not the hardware. A high unit price for the software makes for fat profits for the platform owner and for the big box developers.

Apple creates an eco-system where an independent complete auteur can sit down and cobble together an app that sells 100,000's of copies for $1 each and in a couple months makes more than he'll make at his "job" in a year.

The auteur is obviously happy.

The customers are apparently happy.

Apple is clearly happy with the iPhone sales (and heck $10,000's in their pockets for that app ain't bad either).

So who's not happy? The big box developers who now can't sell their often crappy apps for $20 a pop in a protected eco-system that has allowed them to get away with forcing customers to pay $20 and more for those often crappy non-innovative slockware apps.

They also like to say there are few gems in this auteur "madness" in the app store. Well I like to point out that just because they're charging $60 for PS3 games hasn't made for a diamond mine! There are few gems in the big box nirvana either and certainly plenty of customers with empty pockets and broken hopes.

Apple has Wii'd the Wii, they've made a casual software platform that can deliver it for casual prices and make a fat profit for casual developers. The big box developers have grown fat and lazy writing big budget software that packs in useless features to create non-casual apps that do far more (or less) than people need in a mad effort to justify to themselves the inflated prices they need to charge to pay the huge development efforts put into them. Our XYZZY app has 500 hard to use features of which any single customer will only figure out how to use 50 or so after a year of use. But we feel justified in charging $XXXX because it has 500 features and beside we spent two years and $15 million writing this thing.

Bring on these $20 wonders. Lets see how many of them can justify their price point in these hard economic times when hard scrabble auteurs are competing in the hopes of making their mortgage payments.

My money is on the auteurs.

World of Goo would definitely be worth $20 for iTouch devices, and that's just one example. I think that price point is great if it means devs will bring out the big guns.

In the words of many a contestant on the price is right...

THAT'S TO MUCH!!!

$19.99? Put a d-pad on the iPhone and I'll think about it.

Assuming this was even in Apple's power, rather than up to the developers themselves, the only thing it would accomplish is simultaneous release of a game title on any system that allows downloading of games. But, it's the developers themselves that have created the perceived value of games on the iPhone to be no higher than $10 USD, no matter what the content.

Sure, they could collectively decide to overlook this and start charging $20 a pop per title, but could they really afford the consumer backlash while we are in a recession? The only reason anyone blames Apple for this is because they don't want to directly explain to the customer why they should be paid more money than any other developer on a per title basis.

Besides, what's so bad about the current "trickle-down" system when it comes to successful game titles being ported to the iPhone, versus simultaneous release across multiple platforms? Sure, it's slightly inconvenient to wait on a title, but it does strip out a lot of the "crap" titles the large developers typically dump on Xbox live, PSN or WiiWare alongside their choice titles.

On top of that, if a game does well on these other platforms, an iPhone port costs shouldn't hurt so bad that $10 USD is a crippling blow as long as it sells well and increases the developer's overall recognition throughout the industry.

Those PREMIUM games had better be twice as good as the most full-featured game on the App Store today. Monkey Ball is 1/2 the quality of the DS version, so for $10 more I'd expect the EQUIVALENT of the DS version.

Am I missing something? Surely the point of the App Store is that it's a free market. Anyone can publish a game at 20 bucks if they choose. If it's good enough, people will buy it. End of story. What don't I get?