Is Digital Chocolate planning to release 100 iPhone games?
And to make money on them through 3.0 micro-transactions
It's not just gamers who are sat patiently waiting for the iPhone's 3.0 software update to arrive on iTunes - developers are just as eager for the iPhone to be taken to the next level of functionality.
Speaking with BusinessWeek, Digital Chocolate founder Trip Hawkins has been talking up the massive revenue potential he sees in micro-transactions.
However, what really interests us is the claim that Digital Chocolate plans to release 100 thus-enabled iPhone games in a year.
It seems like an awful lot to us, considering DChoc has only released 15 iPhone games to date and has a reputation for high quality products.
Notably it wasn't a direct quote, so we're checking it out.
Further in the BusinessWeek interview however, it's estimated that App Store revenues could increase by as much as five times through the use of in-game and in-app purchasing. It's also rumoured that Apple will soon allow micro-transactions within free games and applications, but to begin with it'll only be available from within paid apps.
And it's not just games that are hoping to achieve continuous revenue streams from their iPhone products. Online newspapers and publications are apparently planning monthly and annual subscription services, too, bringing the system much closer to the business model print publications are used to (and prefer).
Other platforms, such as Android, BlackBerry and Palm are expected to follow Apple's lead very shortly, and introduce their own in-app purchasing.
"If this particular rollout is successful, I don't think we'll have to look too far into the future to see the same capabilities on Android or the BlackBerry," says Matt Jones, vice-president for mobile strategy and operations at Gannett Digital.
Developers will probably have to accept the fact that users are going to expect considerable price reductions on games and applications that make heavy use of micro-transactions, and it'll undoubtedly take some balancing before the industry gets used to this new system.
