alt Hacker NewsWhen the Apple App store came along it was wild seeing how quickly software went from $10 down to 0.99c in the space of less than a year. And then it was only a matter of time before it dropped to zero. Once it hit zero, the tolerance for payment of any kind went to zero as well for a very large portion of people.
Apps and the internet in general, for most people, is considered almost weightless and zero cost. In the race for market dominance meant dropping the price as low as possible to drive out competition.
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I'd really wish Apple would add a "Exclude apps with in-app purchase" filter to their app store. I don't mind paying for an app, I mind subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Many good apps use subscription models still to great effect, if their user base is of the right type. E.g. overcast the podcast app. It makes excellent money because of the type of user who pays for it is looking for a premium experience. The $0 app thing is for race to the bottom style app markets, which, let’s be honest, has always been that way.
True. Yet, if you don't charge for the software itself, but instead you make that purchase only unlock a skin or some fake currency in that software, and worse, only have a small chance of being the one that user wants, suddenly people will pay 10, 20, or 100 dollars for your software, over and over again.