Freemium Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Daily iPhone App: Robot Unicorn Attack 2 turns Adult Swim's biggest hit freemium

by Mike Schramm (Apr 29th, 2013)

Adult Swim has built up a nice stable of games on the App Store, and the biggest workhorse in it is Robot Unicorn Attack, a Flash game that's an endless runner where you play as the titular creature dashing and jumping to '80s music playing in the background. That game's been very successful, ...

Ultima Forever looks impressive, but may have some freemium problems

by Mike Schramm (Apr 3rd, 2013)

Ultima Forever is one of the weirdest brand experiments I've seen pop up on iOS so far. Ultima is, of course, one of the oldest and best-loved RPG series in video games, with over a dozen different variations and versions. And EA has decided to bring the Ultima series to iOS with Ultima ...

Injustice: Gods Among Us gets an original iOS version

by Mike Schramm (Apr 3rd, 2013)

Injustice: Gods Among Us is a game that's been coming to consoles for a while now -- it's a fighting game, made by the same team behind Mortal Kombat, that features DC Universe superheroes battling it out against each other. The team has released an iOS version of the game, and while it's not ...

Everplay Interactive plans a solid lineup this year

by Mike Schramm (Apr 2nd, 2013)

Developer Kris Jones started out his iOS game design career at a company called Thunder Game Works, which made a popular early App Store game called Trenches before the company connected up with EA as a publisher. These days, Jones runs his own studio of twelve people called Everplay ...

Galaxy on Fire Alliances takes Fishlabs' setting in a new direction

by Mike Schramm (Apr 1st, 2013)

A little while back, Fishlabs announced that they were working on a new title in the Galaxy on Fire space exploration series of games, and that it would take a bit of a new direction, as a strategy MMO rather than as an action title. Last week at GDC, I got to sit down with the company and see ...

Gameloft tries to make good with Dungeon Hunter 4

by Mike Schramm (Apr 1st, 2013)

Gameloft is one of the most interesting companies on Apple's App Store. The company, run out of Paris, France, has earned a reputation for itself by essentially cloning popular console titles. When the App Store first began, huge console titles like Halo, Call of Duty, and Diablo didn't have ...

Firaxis bringing Haunted Hollow to iOS

by Mike Schramm (Mar 21st, 2013)

Firaxis is one of my favorite game developers -- they're the group behind the Civ series as well as the recent (and excellent) XCOM: Enemy Unknown reboot. Today, they've surprise-announced a game called Haunted Hollow, which is coming to iOS later on this spring. As you'd imagine from Firaxis, ...

Daily iPhone App: Rivals at War is fun but way too freemium

by Mike Schramm (Mar 15th, 2013)

Hothead Games is a studio that's been all over the place -- it's a Canadian developer that started out making some interesting PC titles, but lately has transitioned over to iOS, making freemium games that recently have been more freemium than games. The company found a sizable hit with its Big ...

The Blockheads changes the game with a major update

by Mike Schramm (Mar 12th, 2013)

The Blockheads is an excellent game by New Zealand developer David Frampton, also known as Majic Jungle Software. We covered it when it first released earlier this year, and the game has now picked up a really substantial update. iOS updates in general happen pretty often these days (I think I ...

Rovio releasing a game based on The Croods movie

by Mike Schramm (Mar 7th, 2013)

Rovio has announced another game, and it's yet another surprising title from the Finish developer of Angry Birds. Rovio's first non-Angry Birds game was Amazing Alex (which was a rebranding of another developer's game), its second was the spinoff Bad Piggies, and now they're making: The Croods, ...

Daily iPhone App: Sneezies Match is a good idea made better

by Mike Schramm (Mar 7th, 2013)

I know developer Gavin Bowman of Retro Dreamer (co-creator of apps like Velocispider and Duckers, along with artist Craig Sharpe) fairly well, having met up with him at a number of different conferences and events in the past. His studio released a game called Socks a little while ago, which ...

Daily iPhone App: Real Racing 3 is a showcase of the best (and not quite) that iOS has to offer

by Mike Schramm (Feb 28th, 2013)

Here's the bottom line on this one, right away: Real Racing 3 is an amazing game, and EA has put it on the App Store for free. Go grab it and be awed, right now. That said, I do have one issue with this game, and it's that I'm actually a terrible driver. I do fine on real roads at ...

App.net introduces a free tier, currently invite-only

by Mike Schramm (Feb 25th, 2013)

App.net is a service that's had its fans and opponents -- it's currently used as a microblogging service, similar to Twitter, where users can share files and updates easily. But unlike Twitter, App.net's had a philosophy of staying away from ads, letting users keep all rights to the content ...

Hands on with NimbleBit's next title, Nimble Quest

by Mike Schramm (Feb 19th, 2013)

I am a huge fan, as you may already know, of the two brothers behind NimbleBit and all of their work, from the earlier titles like Scoops and DizzyPad to the much larger freemium hits they've had like Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes. The last time I talked to either of the Marsh brothers in ...

Path to introduce premium service

by Michael Grothaus (Jan 21st, 2013)

Personal journaling social network app Path is to introduce a premium service later this year. That's according to Dave Morin, speaking to TechCrunch. Morin has been tackling what every entrepreneur needs to figure out at some point: "How do we monetize this thing?" He believes making Path into ...