Marco says there are two App Stores →
A powerful piece by Marco Arment on the existence of two App Stores in iTunes. It all starts with Gedeon Maheux talking about Ramp Champ sales:
When the moment came, Ramp Champ shot up the charts quickly but just as quick, it hit a brick wall. Within days the app that had peaked at #56 on the top paid chart fell off the top 100 despite receiving praise from users and reviewers alike. The lack of store front exposure combined with a sporadic 3G crashing bug conspired to keep Ramp Champ down for the count.
Marco believes that the Iconfactory went a route that wasn’t meant for them, as he reveals the existence of two app stores:
What happened? As usual, I have a theory: there are two App Stores.
App Store A: Simple, shallow games and apps with mass-market appeal. These live and die by the App Store’s “Top” lists, so success is difficult to achieve and is short-lived at best, but with the largest potential payoff for the lucky few at the top. These apps are developed quickly and cheaply, and are rarely updated once their initial popularity (if any) dies down. Very few are priced above $0.99. Impulse-buying is king, with most purchases happening on the phone itself, and most buyers don’t know or cares whether you’re an established developer unless your name begins with “MLB”. Nearly every best-selling app falls into this category.
App Store B: Apps and games with more complexity and depth, narrower appeal, longer development cycles, and developer maintenance over the long term. These tend to get little attention from the “Top” lists, instead relying on the much-lower-volume App Store features (e.g. “Staff Picks”), blogs, reviews, and word of mouth. More of their customers notice and demand great design and polish. More sales come from people who have heard of your product first and seek it out by name. Many of these apps are priced above $0.99. These are unlikely to have giant bursts of sales, and hardly any will come close to matching the revenue of the high-profile success stories, but they have a much greater chance of building sustained, long-term income. Due to the likely lower revenue cap, these are usually developed on small budgets by individuals who can do most or all of the work themselves.
There’s a lot of thought pouring in Marco’s post; it’s bad enough that I’ve quoted so much.
My views? I thought you’d never ask. When I read Jonas’ glowing review of Ramp Champ, I bought it immediately. I played the game for 15 minutes or so and tried to like it. But the choppy performance coupled with the difficult and unpredictable gameplay led me to abandoning it. I think more than the App Store’s fault, it’s the game itself that wasn’t up to the benchmark that the Iconfactory set with Frenzic.
