To be perfectly honest, most of us harbour a kind of disgust for the term 'in-app purchases' we see beside most gaming apps in the Google or Apple stores. Most users just want to pay for a game one time and be done with the transaction side of things. But that's hardly the case.
However, Apple, ahead of all others in the market, has taken note of the growing dissatisfaction among users with the in-app purchase system, and might be looking to replace it with a new game-type in the App Store. And chances are that the new game type might even be a hit with users and kick off in the long run.
The App Store has recently been featuring games that have arrived with a 'Pay Once And Play' option. This new game type looks to eliminate the in-app purchases that are often found inside games, and offers users the opportunity to pay for a game only once, and not have to deal with any sort of annoying purchases thereafter.
As of now, freemium games are the standard in the market. This involves a developer making a game, and pushing it out for free, making a number of constraints within the game that either forces the user to stick to the game for longer periods of time or pay further to continue their overall progress.
Needless to say, while developers found the deal okay enough to contend with, the companies started receiving more and more negative feedback from customers who made their dissatisfaction pretty clear with the situation. After all, not many users wanted to deal with paying for a game again and again.
However, according to an Inferse report, "the biggest roadblock has been the fact that there are a lot of successful games on the market which follow this freemium model." But that being said, it is important to note that this is a system that still in its nascent stages and is just being tested.
As of now, the freemium model is the most commonly used model in the market, and it is highly likely to grow with time. However, a 'Pay Once And Play' model would be something that could be successful, although depending on whether it experiences a high acceptance rate or not.
