04 July 2008

iPhone App Store

According to Anita Hamilton in Time, Apple’s upcoming App Store will be “anything but a bargain. … Popcap (sic) Games … plans to charge $9.99 for its popular puzzle game Bejeweled.”

Um, but Bejewelled regularly sells for $14.95. (Bejeweled 2 is $19.99.) This seems entirely reasonable pricing to me: it’s cheaper to buy the iPhone version.

The one main difference, not touched upon in the article, is that the download (Windows or Mac) version is available as a free trial — you get an hour to try it out before being asked to pay. The App Store doesn’t seem to have any way to do this. Developers have informally talked about developing two versions, one limited but free, and the full version for sale, but this would give a much worse user experience than you get downloading a trial game for your PC. Hopefully Apple can resolve this by the time the AppStore launches next week.

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