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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2024
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chapotraphouse
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It must stem from the way that buying expensive software/games is normalized for computers and consoles, but still unusual for phones. I don't really know why that is.
High quality paid games with decent graphics were a thing for the very first smartphones and iPods. I remember buying Need For Speed Hot Pursuit on a cousin's iPod 14 years ago because we didn't have a PlayStation or Xbox 360 to buy the game on yet. It was actually a decent port. But then mobile developers realised that you could milk in app purchases and that killed the paid game genre.
In the early days it was actually pretty normal to buy premium games (most pre-smartphone games were paid and I remember buying multiple games when I had an iPhone 3G), but as soon as people realized you could continuously milk people for subscriptions and microtransactions on a device they carry with them everywhere, it was all over. I'm sure there are still passionate devs making good mobile games, but that's not where the money's at.
Separately, premium apps are a lot more common on iOS to this day. I don't know if there's anything about the App Store that encourages this or it's just a quirk of history, but I figured it was worth noting.
I had Bejeweled on my phone back in 2007 ad free and it was glorious. Unfortunately it was the old way of doing things where it was purchased through your cell phone provider, rather than through Google Play or the Apple Store.
The current version is a fucking mess of ads, microtransactions, and dumb multi-player gimmicks.