app-store posts

In part one of our interview with Lima Sky's Igor Pusenjak, we talked about how his Doodle Jump game became so successful, and how other game designers might be able to replicate its success. In this part, however, we get a little more concrete -- Pusenjak discusses current and future updates to the game (there will be an underwater content pack out this summer), as well as the long-awaited iPad version and how it will be different from the iPhone game.

Bad news: it won't be universal, so if you want to play it on the iPad, you'll have to buy it again. But Pusenjak explains why, and according to him, it'll be a very different experience anyway. Read on for part 2 of our interview.

Now, in addition to all of their monetary success, Pusenjak and his brother have also picked up an Apple Design Award; this simple little game is now critically acclaimed as well as being one of the top-grossing iOS titles of all time. I sat down with Pusenjak last week in Los Angeles (just a few miles away from where the traditional game industry was holding their E3 expo) to talk about the past and future of Doodle Jump and how they've found such great success.

This is part one of the interview, and it talks about the business of the App Store and how Lima Sky has done what they've done. Part two will be posted on the site later today, and will explore future updates to the game and the long-awaited Doodle Jump for iPad.

The Taito Corporation is the Japanese developer that owns the Space Invaders franchise, and they have done something pretty crazy with the App Store. They've released a series of completely free, Space Invaders-branded apps, most of which have nothing to do with the game at all. There's the Space Invaders Timer, the Space Invaders Calculator, and even the Space Invaders Flashlight. It's pretty bizarre, although all of the apps are free, so it's probably not worth questioning -- if you're a Space Invaders fan and wish your normal utility apps had a little pixelated alien feel, you've hit the jackpot.

The real winner, though, is the Space Invaders Business Card app. This is a free app that lets you create a virtual business card, that you can even trade across with friends on other phones via Bluetooth. Unfortunately, traded cards only go to the business card album inside the app (unlike Bump, for example, it won't go into your main Contacts app), but once they're in there, you can call out and email directly from the app itself. Especially considering, again, that the app is free, it's a fun little utility that might come in handy, especially if more and more people use it. No idea why Taito has gone nuts creating these little utilities, but free's free, download away.

Not all of the developers on the App Store are starting up gigantic companies or breaking new indie ground. A large number of them, like Darren Sillett and his wife Samantha of Mighty Mighty Good Games, are just experienced programmers who choose an idea and stick with it, iterating and testing to see what works and what doesn't on the App Store. Sillett's biggest app is one of a few versions of Sudoku on the iPhone, but since day one, he and his wife (former Microsoft developers -- Sillett actually worked on Windows Vista) have been playing with this idea of word games on the iPhone, and they've tested all of the tricks. They've released free versions, included ads, tried different pricing and versions, and so on. As a result, they've found success with over ten million downloads of their free apps and over 200k in paid-app sales.

Sillett told me that his next big step will be to bring some of his apps to the iPad, and he's planning on going universal. While there will be some extra stuff in the iPad version, he thinks that universal is the best choice for his customers, at least while he's testing the waters. We also talked at length about iAds; Sillett says that ads have proven more beneficial for him in just the last few months, as ad companies and customers have really started to move the market along.

Big surprise here, right? AdMob, freshly picked for purchase by Google (cue dramatic music) has been expelled from Valhalla, also known as the App Store, by a tiny change in the iOS developer agreement. Specifically, section 3.3.9 of the agreement, which precludes companies who do anything other than deliver ads from delivering ads on apps within Apple's precious, increasingly-walled ecosystem.

On the AdMob blog, chief exec Omar Hamoui stated, "This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it's clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress." Hamoui said AdMob would "be speaking with Apple," although there's no indication that Apple will listen.

I'd have to agree with Hamoui's statement. In fact, it's a little off-putting to see Apple react this way, considering it'll only lend fuel to the fire already raging around possible anti-competitive practices. No doubt Steve Jobs has a witty sentence in waiting for this one. Meanwhile, the thousands of developers using AdMob will now have to worry about deploying something else in their apps.

I'm actually driving up to San Francisco this afternoon for WWDC (and if you're there already, be sure to make an appointment to see us sometime this week!), but one of the things that I hope to get a chance to check out is the famous "app wall," a real-time view of apps being downloaded from the App Store. This year they've tweaked the setup a little bit, as you can see in the video from Mashable above. Last year, the app icons just rippled, but this year, they drop down and organize themselves into colors, creating an awesome effect of seeing what apps are going out through the App Store.

And the hardware behind the setup is even more amazing than it looks: apparently they've got 30 Mac Pros running this thing -- data is fed from the App Store into an XML feed, which gets passed off to an OpenCL kernel, while Quartz Composer renders the final output. That's a serious setup for something just shown at one conference a year! But it sure is cool.

Highborn is an interesting little App Store title. It won't be for everyone -- it's a turn-based strategy game that has a pretty steep learning curve, and while the actual game itself is pretty casual as games like this go, players unfamiliar with of moving troops around could find it confusing. But those interested in the genre (the gameplay actually reminded me a lot of Nintendo's Advance Wars series) will find it a fun distraction.

You control troops and heroes on a tesselated board, and can pit various units against each other in battle. The story is silly and fun, and the emphasis is on simple advantages and odds rather than hardcore troop placement and balance.

It's not the only game of its kind on the App Store (Battle for Wesnoth is another example for a bit more money), but Highborn is a fun and original title that combines the basics of turn-based tactical strategy with a fun fantasy story and a portable package. It's on an introductory sale right now for US$2.99.

Recently, we've seen a big trend of apps on the App Store going free because free apps tend to garner more attention and downloads (and in-app purchases mean that there's still a possibility of making a profit down the line). However, it turns out that there is one benefit of sticking with a paid app: they stay on the top of the charts for a longer period of time. Data (provided by a company called Distimo) for the month of May in the App Store shows that paid apps are "stickier" on the App Store charts; while free apps only lasted a little over a week, some paid apps stayed on the top of the charts for over a hundred days.

Why is this? My guess is that it involves something that we've heard a lot of talk about, which is that the habits of paying customers are different from those of "free app" customers. Customers who pay for apps are more likely to leave thoughtful reviews and spread the word about a worthwhile app, both of which will extend the time that an app is popular. Customers who use a lot of free apps tend to buy and dispose of apps quickly, while customers who pay are more likely to find the ones they like and stick with them for a while.

After all of the big news about free apps, it's interesting to hear that there are still reasons to stick with paid. As the App Store continues to develop, there are multiple working models for software sales unfolding.

I got to play Freeverse's iPhone video game adaptation of the popular book Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies at GDC. I'm glad to say that it's now out on the App Store for your downloading pleasure. The game offers 12 levels of Jane Austen-inspired zombie-killing mayhem, gesture-based controls, and the mix of old school romance and new school slaughterhouse that made the book so popular.

I will warn again that the app is not for the faint of heart, but then again the icon isn't either. Still, for US$2.99, there are worse beat-em-up games to be had, and you won't find any others with legitimate Jane Austen dialogue in them.

A full review of the game is coming up on TUAW later this week, but many of you probably already know you want to jump in and kill the "dreadfuls." Have at it.

This little tidbit was hidden in the rush of iPad news last week, but if you check out the iTunes App Store, you'll notice that Apple has started promoting an official iPhone and iPad App of the Week (presumably every week from now on).

They're not diving very deep to find apps for this one (MLB At Bat 2010 is the iPad app, and We Rule is the iPhone choice -- both of those hardly need any more promotion), but since we've heard from developers that Apple promotion really can make or break an app, the addition of another app spotlight can only mean good things for those apps.

Critical Thought's David Whatley made this point well at GDC a few weeks ago -- he said that niche outlets (like our own little blog right here) covered his app first, which then gained the attention of Apple, who then promoted it in the App Store as "new and notable" and on the top paid charts. That then led to mainstream attention, which of course led up to major sales numbers. In short, the more Apple promotes apps, the more they sell. And that's why an "App of the Week" promotion like this can mean a lot to the right developers. MLB doesn't really need the extra spotlight, but getting a slot in the new App of the Week spot could make the careers of quite a few smaller developers out there.

Here's a little levity on the eve of the iPad launch chaos tomorrow. We're going through release after release today of all of these iPad apps, and after browsing page after page after page in the App Store, it's sometimes easy to forget just how much work went into each one of these things. The Omni Group has a nice writeup on their blog about how they designed the OmniGraphSketcher app, and while the iPad will be the center of attention tomorrow for its blend of technology and innovation, the Omni app was actually designed in a very low-tech way: with paper.

They designed a same-size iPad mockup and cut out a bunch of paper menus and interfaces, and then did their testing with them that way, going with instinct on what goes where and how it all worked out. The iPad is an innovative device, to be sure, but the reason it's so innovative is because you can model it easily with much older technology like paper. Developers don't cut out a paper mouse and keyboard to design their desktop apps, but with the iPad, the interface has to be re-designed completely, and so cutting out colored paper is just as effective as testing out code. Very interesting, and something to keep in mind as we all touch and poke and prod our new devices tomorrow.

[via 37Signals]

We posted a short while ago that iPad apps are now in the App Store. An interesting feature we just discovered is that iTunes now splits your downloaded apps in the Apps library in the iTunes source list. Any iPhone app specifically optimized for the iPad is now segregated into its own category. In your iTunes App library you'll now see two headings: the top heading is "iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad Apps" with all the non-iPad optimized apps relegated to an "iPhone and iPod touch Apps" category.

An iPad-optimized app is an iPhone app that supports both the iPhone's and iPad's native resolution and thus doesn't need to use the iPad's 2x zoom feature to display the app full screen on the iPad. And while we haven't gotten a chance to sync up an iPad yet, we'll presume that iPad-only apps will have their own section as well.

Update: Apple is now featuring iPad apps on the App Store homepage in iTunes. Looks like the iPad App Store is officially live. Get those iPad apps while they're hot.

MobileMe has some great features, but Apple needs to stay on top of it to keep it competitive with other services. It's a bit pricey and hasn't changed all that much over the last couple of years, so new features are always worthy of notice.

Fortunately, Apple made one small step for mankind by releasing an update to the MobileMe Gallery app for the iPhone and iPod touch today.

Now it is easy to add your friends' MobileMe Galleries with just a couple of clicks on your touch screen. When you select "Add a Friend," the app will search your contact list and indicate which of your friends have MobileMe Galleries. Click on add from there, and it's done. Slick.

It's not a big deal, but it's a nice touch, especially for a service on which updates are sparse. The update takes the app to version 1.1 and is as close as a tap on your iPhone's App Store icon, or you can head over to iTunes and grab it from there.

Silicon Alley Insider has posted an interesting chart that shows the total number of apps available across various mobile platforms. As you can see from the chart, Apple's iPhone leads the pack by a longshot with 170,000 apps according to AppShopper.com. AppShopper typically lists more apps than Apple publicly states it has because AppShopper updates its numbers on a daily basis. As of today's count, AppShopper says Apple has approved 198,924 apps with 171,722 available to download. The discrepancy between the numbers accounts for apps that either the developers or Apple have removed from the App Store. Apple officially states that it currently has 150,000 apps.

A distant second after Apple's App Store is Google's Android Marketplace with 30,000 apps. RIM's Blackberry trails with only 5,000 apps, while Palm has a paltry 2,000. Windows Phone 7 Series Applications were announce a few days ago with a limited number of developers signed on. Of course, these numbers don't take app quality into account at all (100,000 fart apps is still just a bunch of junk), but clearly in terms of available downloads, Apple has a huge lead.