PocketGamer's plea to improve Apple's App Store
PocketGamer.biz, the industry-focused side of the always excellent UK handheld/mobile game news site has just published a very well-reasoned opinion piece on what Apple can do to improve the App Store experience both on PC and the iPhone itself.
The ideas presented -- from better integration of Lite/demo versions, ala Xbox Live Arcade, to better recommendation tools as employed by Netflix and Amazon -- are all fantastic, and while some are being solved by third party tools (LivingSocial's iPhone section lets Facebook users share and rate their most-used apps, and I'm a frequent reader of Pinch Media's new and updated app RSS feeds), we all hope Apple goes to greater lengths to learn the lessons of its competitors over the coming months and years.
Says opinion author Stuart Dredge on filtering, for instance:
The more games that are available, the more pearls there are to find. But how to find them? An essential part of any app store is decent search and filtering tools, enabling you to find the good stuff quickly and easily. And this is one area where the App Store currently falls down a bit.As a gamer, there are two key criteria I want to use to filter the games on an app store. First, I want to know what's new - what's really new, as opposed to what old games have just been patched.
An option to quickly scan all the games that have been released today, this week, this month or even since the last time I logged on (if that's tracked) would be invaluable.
Anything Dredge missed from a consumer or developer standpoint? We'd all love to hear your opinions via the comments below.
Opinion: The perfect mobile app store [PocketGamer.biz]
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Doctor Popular
#1 – 2:26 PM February 6, 2009
The suggested games idea could be great. If I only download Desktop Tower Defense games, then I really don't need to comb through every new poker/fishing/tetris games out there.
I don't use the iTunes Genius feature, but if it works anywhere near as good as they say it does, it would be great to have an appstore version.
mister mo
#2 – 2:44 PM February 7, 2009
The issue with demos is something near and dear to my heart. I think that they are *essential* to purchasing games off the App Store. I think this as both a gamer and a developer.
Apple have a terrible system to handle this. I tried to submit a demo version of my game Geomex, titled "Geomex demo". Rejected. You aren't actually allowed to use the word "demo" anywhere in your app. It was also rejected for showing "features that are not implemented". So we can't use "demo" and we can't tell you *why* you'd want to buy the full game. I eventually submitted "Geomex lite", but it's not a very good demo.
Regarding the article, I don't think the idea of an emulated version is very good, especially on an iPhone where the input is make or break, and you can only determine that when playing on the device. I think doing time-limited 1 hour timed demos like the casual PC scene, or Xbox Community Games styled "8 minutes and it quits" would make much more sense.
RobinClarke
#3 – 10:17 AM February 8, 2009
(A minor quibble: The article appears to be aimed at all mobile service providers, not just Apple.)
I think sideloading is a bit of a red herring. Flat rate data and/or wifi are quickly becoming standard features, and syncing a phone to a PC is inconvenient by comparison.
With regards to the iPhone App Store, the shortcomings that Dredge notes are a good reminder that while Apple have built a good piece of gaming hardware, they still don't really understand games. This wasn't much of an issue with the early home computers (touted by their manufacturers as business/educational machines), but in the iPhone's case the means of distribution are controlled by Apple. I expect it will be a slow, fraught process to get Apple to listen to and act on feature requests from anyone smaller than EA.
The highest priority features that the App Store needs are 'official' support for demos, versioning of products to prevent updates appearing as new, and billing options other than credit card. (The last of these isn't so important for Apple as they don't offer a device aimed at young adults or casual users, so they're already throwing away a large slice of the total market.)