Many games are released on the Apple App Store as two separate apps: One as a free demo with a limited feature set, and the other as a full version which players must pay for. You do, however, have the choice to release them both as a single app where a player can purchase the full content upgrade from within the app itself. This is known as an "In-App Purchase". Why do this over the traditional two-app model? Because, supposedly, a player may be more inclined to buy your product if they don't have to take the trouble to get out of your app and look up the full version to buy it. If the golden "Get these great features now!" button is right there, they're a few less taps away from gratification.
Now consider Tiltz. Versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 have all had 1 1/2 star ratings, barely a 2% turnover rate in sales (meaning for every 100 downloads, 2 people bought the full version) combined, and only one out of six players bothered to upgrade it when new updates came out. Unfortunately the comments are very few and sparse, so I'm left to figure out why this is happening. Here's why I think it is:
- The free version only has one level. When you beat it, a picture of all twelve levels appears encouraging you to buy it. You get maybe two minutes of play time, and you've gone as far as you can go. There are thousands of other free apps that give you much more than that at no cost. This takes me to my next point...
- Most of the one star ratings are for the free version of Tiltz...which is also embedded with the full version of Tiltz. People can easily be led to think the full version is only worth one star.
- There was one comment which suggested, in cryptic terms, that the game would not run. Unfortunately I have no idea what the model of the phone was, but players frustrated by performance and installation issues turn to one star ratings to punish the developers for not knowing better.
It could also be that the app is just, well, not App Store material. To find out for sure, I'm going to put up another release with more free content and more paid content (to be fair), and see what happens. When I do, I'll post the results here.
