Which brings me to my point. Price fixing, for good historical reasons, is illegal. I can't take one of my games and tell a portal that they must sell that title at any given price. They can sell it at any price they care to. The net result is that this prevents me from doing business with some portals because I can't make anywhere near a living selling my niche titles at the current price casual downloadable price point of $6.99 that games are being sold at.
Price fixing laws make sense in a physical economy where retailers have to pay for product but they are problematic when an online retailer can unilaterally take products for which they have no monetary outlay and use them as price leaders. The only way I have of 100% controlling my investment as a developer is to only sell my products exclusively on my website and through my affiliate chain which isn't feasible for all digital artists. Ultimately I expect that we will see price fixing laws changed as they relate to digital products but today they are causing me problems as I try to do business with other companies that have their own distribution systems because we can't legally agree to set a common price.
And... I bought an iTouch yesterday. And then I paid a whopping $0.99 for Dungeon Defense which is just gorgeous and really hits my tower defense cravings right in the sweet spot. I know that a lot of those game developers are losing money but, as a consumer, games as $1 snacks are pretty addictive. Sadly there have been plenty of reports lately that show that it's just not a sustainable business model for the developers. I feel bad for the current wave of dev's who drank the kool-aid and who are now trying to figure out how to recoup their costs and pay their bills not to mention figure out what they are now going to do with those new found iPhone dev. skills now that it's apparent that most of them aren't going to make a living writing programs for the device.
Peace,
L.
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