In-appPurchase Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily iPhone App: Haunted Hollow is frighteningly good

by Mike Schramm (May 3rd, 2013)

I've been crowing about how great Firaxis' Haunted Hollow is since GDC earlier this year, so odds are that you've probably already seen me telling you once (or more) to go pick it up. But in case the message hasn't gotten through yet: Go pick it up. Firaxis' latest game is just an excellent, ...

Plague, Inc. gets a new virus, delivered in an interesting way

by Mike Schramm (Feb 26th, 2013)

Plague Inc. is one of the most popular strategy games on the App Store: It's a title with the gory premise of you controlling a plague running around the world, trying to infect as many people as possible before the rest of humanity can come up with a cure. The game's latest update is out this ...

Civ Revolution updated, with multiplayer and more

by Mike Schramm (Feb 21st, 2013)

Civ Revolution is one of my favorite apps on my iPad -- I'm a big Civ fan, and I think Civ Rev is a great touchscreen adaptation of the series. And now, it's even better: 2K Games has released an update for the app that adds a number of new in-app purchase packs, giving you the option to pick ...

Daily iPhone App: Pangolin bounces its way through your custom-made platforms

by Mike Schramm (Jan 18th, 2013)

Last year, I participated in the game jam at 360iDev, and my idea for a game there was to make a touchscreen 2D puzzle platformer where you could swipe across the screen to create platforms to close gaps or create a navigation path. Given that I'm still a beginner game programmer, that game ...

Hero Academy Dwarves update coming Feb 22, for $1.99

by Mike Schramm (Feb 16th, 2012)

Hero Academy has fallen a bit out of my gaming attention lately (truth be told, Triple Town is stealing most of my iOS gaming time these days, probably more than is healthy), but it's still an excellent free-to-play title, and I still have about 15 games going on at any given moment. Currently, ...

Odd GameStore app by Apple appears in App Store (Updated)

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jan 2nd, 2012)

Everyone with an iPhone is familiar with Game Center, but have you ever heard of GameStore? Discovered by Florian Schimanke, it's a game-oriented app from Apple that went live on December 31st. Unlike other iOS apps from Apple, which are well-known and well-publicized, GameStore is a ...

Audible removing in-app purchases according to Apple's rules

by Mike Schramm (Oct 10th, 2011)

We've seen quite a bit of squabbling over the subscription and in-app purchase for content rules on the App Store in the past, but generally, things have tended to go Apple's way. Most companies, especially those who really depend on the iOS audience for buying their content, are eventually ...

Younger audiences play more freemium games, but 25-34 year-olds pay for them

by Mike Schramm (Sep 8th, 2011)

Flurry's latest post is yet another interesting read on freemium games on the App Store, specifically which age groups are playing them, and which age groups are paying for them. They've used consumer spending data across over 1.4 billion sessions, which means this information is as accurate as ...

Catan app adds Seafarers expansion with in-app purchase

by Mike Schramm (Jan 20th, 2011)

The great Catan iOS game has added in its first expansion, available via an in-app purchase, and it's based on the Seafarers of Catan expansion from the original German board game. The expansion introduces ships and shipping routes to the kingdom-building simulation, and it includes 10 different ...

Rock Band Reloaded out now on App Store, Puzzle Quest 2 out soon

by Mike Schramm (Dec 2nd, 2010)

Two big sequels have hit the App Store in the past day or so -- as the holidays are here, more big name titles will be forthcoming for sure. First up, EA has released Rock Band Reloaded, a new version of the popular Rock Band music game series for iOS. This one plays generally the same as the first ...

OpenFeint announces in-app content service, infrastructure to support freemium games

by Mike Schramm (Dec 1st, 2010)

Social gaming network OpenFeint has finally unveiled its OpenFeint X service, which will allow developers on the App Store (and a few other mobile platforms) to add cloud-based microtransaction content to their games on top of Apple's own in-app purchase service. This is apparently a system that ...

Report: In-app purchases to overtake download revenues by 2013

by Mike Schramm (Nov 30th, 2010)

Here's an interesting report from Juniper Research. According to their work, mobile app revenues will reportedly grow from the current US $6 billion to a whopping $11 billion by 2015. And the majority of that revenue will come not from the standard download fee, but instead from in-app purchases, ...

Flurry: In-app purchases generating lots more revenue per user

by Mike Schramm (Jul 16th, 2010)

Analytics firm Flurry has announced that in-app purchases are generating $14.66 per user per year in June of 2010, which is a few times larger than it has been in the past. Previously to 2010, the games tracked were generating only a few bucks per user per year, but in January the total jumped to ...