7 reasons why appstores are doomed

[nem0ff]

Interesting article

https://medium.com/p/ce05dda53e7c

[Funkyy]

Its like author dont use appstores or use them only as developer, not end user.

[benny!]

Well, but still there are valid points the author mentioned. 

 

That said - I do not think the app store itself will disappear. The appstore itself it's just a nice catalogue of available apps.

 

IMHO the nature of apps will change. In the future more and more webapps will appear and software/games as a service will become more popular on mobile devices instead. So, maybe the "appstore of tomorrow" will simply restrict the access to those "game services" like it is already doing in some sort with the IAP.

[dev]

Interesting and very true on a number of points but pretty one-sided (which is okay, sometimes).

 

For the other side, my comments below:

 

1° the download / access flow is just bad:

Yes, via an email, sure. But can you remember the last time you obtained an app solely through an email? I've never been emailed an app link. Appstores are great for the user because there's one single place to get all your content specifically made for your device. The general internet (or e.g.) email just doesn't offer that level of filtering. Steam or an Apple Appstore are succesful because they actually hugely improved the download/access flow. Comparing it to a web-app is fair, but then we've already got web-app stores, so the comparison isn't fair. It's just another native vs web discussion that's not really just about app stores, it blurs the discussion sadly.

 

2° updates are a pain in the ass

Absolutely not for the user. Yes, for a developer updating can be a pain and I fully agree, I don't have anything to add here. But for a user? Apps are curated, tested for security and in part stability. Updates are given more weight and thus more attention. What's more, *I* can choose whether I update or not, the user has choice, the developer can't force the user by changing the web-app (potential security problem, too). And updates are only installed once, whereas web-apps need to be downloaded over and over again. Especially for mobile devices on mobile internet connections (3g in a building / subway / at my friends' room that somehow acts like an internet-free cave?) having to download content on every playthrough is a pain and requires a proper backend for any developer that builds a popular web-game on any scale, something appstores handle for you. There's huge benefits for both users and developers in this space, too.

 

3° discovery is terrible

100% moot argument because app-store discovery is not mutually exclusive to anything else. So, appstores are an extra way to discover apps, not the only exclusive way. Look at a popular game like Kingdom Rush and you'll find *huge* amounts of appstore installs being generated through traffic from their Flash versions or Webapp versions. But all these stores point to the appstore version in the end for the premium content, which is where the developers want users to go. I wonder why? Discovery is not perfect, but any developer (as many have) can drive discovery outside the appstore to the appstore.

 

4° 30% transaction fees are a steal

This I think is a valid point for the future. But at the moment we're still seeing developers who built a web and native version of their game send all their users to the native version. It's probably because of one thing. Appstores have *much* better payment ecosystems. Something that a lot of people don't understand is this. Apple has more than half a billion creditcards on file. That's absolutely insane and it's a big reason its generated so much revenue from content. As a developer you can very easily tap into that, a user only has to write their own password once. The bounce rate on payments on webapps is much higher because a user has to go through all kinds of hoops to make the payment. That's why a 30% margin is fine because 70% of something is better than 100% of barely anything. This will likely change in the future as mobile web services (e.g. for payments) will mature, but at the moment there's no comparison. Try to get someone to pay upfront for a Flash or HTML5 game, or for in-game content, it just barely happens compared to the native version. This will change, but not next week.

 

5° native doesn’t equal quality.

Don't think this argument holds much weight. I'd say the average quality of webapps is not as good as native apps, for one. You can look at an app, see screenshots, reviews, and seeing it in the first place usually means it was featured/trending. Webapps don't have a repository for apps that is mature the curation, metadata, screenshots, reviews etc of a native store. Not even close.

 

6° most apps need the web anyway

What? Ridiculous argument. Because an application users the internet, it's inherently a good idea to build it in an internet browser? No. 

 

7° why would you wrap your app in a web viewer?

Yeah, why would you? Ugh. I think a better question at this point is why do I bother with someone throwing nonsense reasons around who obviously has vested interests in web apps because he has a company that allows you to build webapps.

 

Anyway there's a lot of reasons why appstores are annoying and what the future of customer-software on desktop/mobile devices will be. It's very interesting and I'm personally a big fan of web applications. But let's be serious about this discussion.

[tipztv]

I agree with the 3rd point. 30% transaction fee is a real pain, but it's just for developers. App discovery is something that can be solved. 

[benny!]

About the 30% split.

 

Did you ever think about what the whole payment process involves (dealing with different institutes, countries, fraud detection, etc)? In addition - having a single payment system the user feels comfortable with - is a real plus.

 

I would be really interested in what you guys would choose instead of the native appstore payment methods, if you had the free choice?

[Biggerplay]

I've created a few iOS games, and I'm working on a big iOS project as well (which you can read about here ). Now I'm taking my first few steps into HTML5 games. I actually first looked into HTML5 game development 2 years back, but it seemed things weren't ready back then, so I started to learn Obj-C/XCode.

 

Whether App stores are doomed is a difficult question to answer. On one hand you have these stores full to saturation point of "curated" content with a super easy method for users to pay for that content on devices which a whole lot of people the world over are now using for their gaming (at least when they are not in front of their TV) requirements. Apple also have the development side of things worked out pretty much perfectly, XCode is a great tool, and the whole developer program and getting your app onto the store is fairly straightforward (although hard to get to grips with at the start).

 

HTML5 game development is this strange mix of semi-web and semi-mobile development, you can either argue that it's not got the strengths of Flash on one hand (not much security, hard to share files etc) or mobile (payment systems are not as well implemented as on mobile) or that it's flexibility to run on anything via browsers is actually the most important strength it has and needs to make it succeed against App stores.

 

On top of this there's the business aspects relating to vested interests on both sides which obviously impact how platforms develop and progress (or not).

 

App discovery is a huge problem on the App stores though there's no doubt about that, and that's because people have learned how to set up their games/businesses in such a way to maximise their monetization and retention, which means that anyone who doesn't do that just get's lost in the mix.

 

As a developer there's little point in trying to predict which will succeed and base your development choices on that. There's money to be made on App stores and there's money to be made in HTML5 games, so it's more about what development environments/languages are you comfortable with? what promotional channels can you access to promote your game?

[LoneWolf]

The appstores will aways be there, but with time i think HTML 5 web games will take a big share of this market, and once webgl is common on mobile devices, well Android stores will be in trouble, iOS not so much, since their users are so used to close platforms, stores.

[SpriteWrench]

This is interesting.  Ive been seeing posts announcing the exact opposite pop up all over the place.  The end of the web developer, as our skills/tools become commodities that people generally expect for free. The death of the web "as we know it" and the promotion of appstores as everyone and their grandma goes on to use mobile tablets and such (down with the PC! if you will).  As a result im a bit skeptical of the future of HTML5 game development, and web development as a whole. However, I just like making games and it is far, far easier to get eyeballs on your project when your audience doesn't have to download anything (the mobile experience is just icing on the cake for me).