BlackBerry® World™ Development

[jaiaca]

I agree BlackBerry World is missing two essential charts....Top Grossing and Top Paid/Free (per category) - this is important, not just on the frontpage but in each category I should be able to see who's the Top Paid and Top Free.

Most indie or small developers don't get much visibility but the problem with freemium is that you have to rely on users to purchase after they have something for free, and using Nobex is not a good example...they are featured way too much to be used as a good example.

BlackBerry could have a "indie" or "good and unknown" app/game section, just something to help promote the small and indie developers.

Anyways, getting off topic...I'm an indie developer and was planning to giving my game (WordsPlus) away for free but 1) it was hard to figure out what to sell to users (it's a word search game and wasn't sure people would pay for more word categories) and 2) thankfully my game was approved as Built for BlackBerry (although promotion hasn't started yet).

If I didn't get Built for BlackBerry, I would be using the freemium model and selling word categories....I still think putting out a free version would be good with lots of visibility but we'd all like to make some kind of revenue so for now it's 99cents and I'll wait until after March (on the assumption that this is when B4B promotion will start) to see where things stand.

My 2 cents

[gbeukeboom]

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jaiaca wrote:

I agree BlackBerry World is missing two essential charts....Top Grossing and Top Paid/Free (per category) - this is important, not just on the frontpage but in each category I should be able to see who's the Top Paid and Top Free.

Most indie or small developers don't get much visibility but the problem with freemium is that you have to rely on users to purchase after they have something for free, and using Nobex is not a good example...they are featured way too much to be used as a good example.

BlackBerry could have a "indie" or "good and unknown" app/game section, just something to help promote the small and indie developers.

Anyways, getting off topic...I'm an indie developer and was planning to giving my game (WordsPlus) away for free but 1) it was hard to figure out what to sell to users (it's a word search game and wasn't sure people would pay for more word categories) and 2) thankfully my game was approved as Built for BlackBerry (although promotion hasn't started yet).

If I didn't get Built for BlackBerry, I would be using the freemium model and selling word categories....I still think putting out a free version would be good with lots of visibility but we'd all like to make some kind of revenue so for now it's 99cents and I'll wait until after March (on the assumption that this is when B4B promotion will start) to see where things stand.

My 2 cents

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Hi Jason,

Good ideas, I'd definitely suggest throwing them into the Issue Tracker

Please keep in mind that apps cannot be switched from free to paid, and changing the model on the fly could prove very frustrating to existing users.

[jtegen]

Still would love BBW to bring back a real try and buy model. Let BBW control the trial period and notify (notification) when app is about to expire then prompt them to purchase the full amount. IAP is difficult to test and forces the work to be done by the developer instead on just having a mechanism in BBW to do the heavy lifting. Just use IAP in apps that actually have assets/resources to purchase and not the app itself.

[peter9477]

jtegen, by the way, somewhere it was said that BlackBerry World updates will (already have? or just will "soon"?) allow much easier testing, where sandbox accounts will be able to exercise the full capability using the real servers, but simply won't be billed anything.

I actually like the idea of using IAP instead of a "canned" try-and-buy, because it allows greater flexibility. Not having actually done it yet though, as you have, my opinion carries little weight on this. ;-)

[thubalek]

I would like to support jtegen.

IAP has sophisticated API, very useful if you develop game and want to sell various in game stuff.

Using it for implementation of Try & Buy is overkill.

Even with Sandbox (as is currently implemented) is it no easy to test it (on Android you can setup in Developer Console status of every virtual goods for every tester so you can test it quite easily).

I would love to see Try & Buy API implemented by BB. It does not make sense to require that thousand developers will implement the same code.

[jtegen]

I know this will not come for a very long time, but it would be nice to just upload the BAR file, set it as a try and buy, define the number of days of the trial period (7,15,30, etc), and let BBW client app manage it each time the app is launched and drive the consumer to purchase the app when the trial nears the end. With notification, developers and BB might see an increase of sales, because an IAP freemium requires the app to be run. Then the IAP model, the app has to determine the number of days since it was first installed, check the duration, check to see if the IAP occurred yet (more data cache and/or previous purchases server call), then prompt them to continue or not, then open up a purchase channel that might not exist due to a lack of connection.

Yes, this would have to be an OS service (launcher service), but increase UX (consistent approach), less developer effort, easier configuration, increase sales.

It would be nice to see someone who had good sales as a paid app that went to an IAP method and let everyone know how sales might have changed. It is too much of a risk to change without knowing if the outcome is equal or better.