Reaching the final steps of development of our upcoming iPhone/iTouch games, we’ve recently been discussing about how we’re going to market them: is it better to release a free lite version accompanied by a full paid one, or a single free version with a full-upgrade option? While the first method is still the most used among developers, in-app purchases are becoming increasingly popular in new products. Let’s try to find out why.

Here’s a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages we found of each of these distribution models:

Lite + Full version

• Pro: The Lite version can be trimmed down to a lighter package (by deleting non-available content), making it a 3G feasible download even if the full version is not.
• Pro: The full version can appear in the “paid-apps” AppStore listings.
• Pro: Separate reviews for lite and full app: usually reviews are higher for paid apps, since people think twice about purchasing it and make sure it’s what they’re looking for.
• Con: The full version can easily be pirated and illegally distributed, reporting us server costs but no income or AppStore presence.
• Con: Two different Apps have to be released and maintained.

Free upgradeable version

• Pro: Piracy is drastically reduced, since the App is already free and In-App purchases need account verification.
• Pro: We only have to care about delivering and maintaining one single app instead of two.
• Pro: More and unified downloads, since people love free stuff, which mean more presence and visibility in the App Store.
• Pro: The upgrading process is easier than downloading 2 separate apps, which may attract more customers.
• Con: In-App purchases require iPhone OS 3.0 or later, so users with older firmwares wouldn”t be able upgrade our game.
• Con: Anyone can leave a review on your game, even though they have not tried the full version.

With reports of illegal copies accounting up to 80% of the total downloads of some applications, it seems that the anti-piracy measure is the strongest benefit of delivering free-upgradeable Apps. However, the 3.0 OS restriction directly reduces the amount of potential customers who could be buying our games, even those who are just curious to try out the free versions. According to this adMob report, there’s still a significant number of users with older firmwares (especially among iPod Touch users) which we definetely wouldn’t want to miss.

In our current developer status it looks like the rest of the points don’t actually make a difference to us, or at least not as significant as to choose one method over the other since both have their valid pros and cons. Interestingly so, this reasoning left us with no clear answer on our initial question, which is probably also happening to lots of other iPhone developers out there.

Only time will tell us which is the right direction to take, so, until then, we will closely be watching how the iPhone market evolves and leave this complicated decisions to our beloved market analyst: Mr. Brainosaur.

by David | Posted in Development, General, Upcoming Titles