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iTunes App Store launches, but how do you find the games?
So iTunes 7.7 is available, and with it the App Store. There are (by my reckoning) about 500 apps on there, of which iDrops, our puzzle game, is one. Though you wouldn’t know it.
Unfortunately, Apple have taken the approach of only listing eight games in each game category. If you are one of the eight games listed under “Puzzle / Strategy”, then people can find your game very easily, and buy it (thereby pushing up your rating in the App charts). If you’re not listed, then the only way to find a game is to search by name (which is pointless when no-one knows what’s available), or to look through the “All iPhone Applications”, “All iPod Touch Applications”, or “All Free Applications” lists and scroll through 20-odd pages. (And we didn’t think to call our game “AardvarkDrops”.)
Until this changes, we might as well not have bothered creating a game. If no-one can find it, then no-one can buy it. And if I visit the iTunes store now to see what puzzle games are available to buy, then as far as I can tell, iDrops isn’t one of them.
Grr.
[...] I read how annoyed the author of iDrops was about the lack of visibility for his game. I went to his website, played the game and understood why Apple may not have wanted the game to be in the top ten – it’s a copy of the Bubble game included with Windows Mobile! However I did enjoy that game on my PocketPC so after playing the website version for a while, I did go and buy the iDrops game (well it was only 59p ($0.99)). [...]