There has been some confusing press about ngmoco and the developer removing Rolando when Rolando is released in the AppStore. Apparently, ngmoco has decided to not remove Rolando when the sequel is released and they are returning Topple to the AppStore as well.
This news has me a little baffled. In the video game industry, when a new game comes out, say GTA IV, and the distributor has an older version, GTA: San Andreas, still on the store shelves, its pretty easy to understand why that distributor would want to remove GTA: SA to have shelf space for the newer GTA IV.
In the case of the AppStore, a virtual storefront, there is infinite shelf space for all kinds of games and other applications. This is why there are over 50,000 titles in the store now.
So, removing an older title to put up a new title like Topple 2 or Rolando 2 doesn’t make any sense to me. Say a patron hits the AppStore, sees Rolando 2, buys it and finds out that he missed out on the first version of the game and wants to play it too. Well, if the older title is removed from the store, ngmoco has lost a sale that costs them noting to maintain in the store. Pure profit lost. Or, what about the patron that had Rolando, but for some reason, lost the copy from his computer and wants to recover it by downloading it again. He can for free with the AppStore, it costs ngmoco $0.00 for that ability. Yet, since Rolando was removed for the new version, that customer has lost his game that he potentially paid $9.99 for. If I were that customer, I would not be very happy and be looking to Apple to refund that money or allow me to download that game again.
Now, maybe I’m incorrect about the costs involved in keeping the older versions of their games in the AppStore. Maybe they are thinking of development costs of fixing bugs in a version that they consider obsolete.
At any rate, this is all moot since ngmoco is going to not remove Rolando when Rolando 2 is released and is returning Topple to the AppStore as well.
I would love to understand why ngmoco would think its a good thing to remove older versions of games for newer ones.
Dave M.
