If you’re not getting those sorts of download figures (and I’m talking about free, ad-supported downloads), you’re not going to make anything with add-on IAPs anyway…the conversion rate for add-ons is probably less than 1% in my experience. If the game isn’t fun in its own right without the add-ons then it won’t be a success anyway.
Your suggestion for a $200 bolt-on is fair enough, but then pro subscribers aren’t getting a whole lot for their extra $400…
Great conversation! Thanks David for making it one stop place.
My take:
1- I am satisfied that I can renew at $349 for two more years. Coming from indie licence it was always my idea to eventually switch to “pro” at one point (really just of matter of having time to sit down and learn about Android) It just happening sooner now (and for free until August!)
2- Yes, I think it will have been better to first introduce the new “goodies” in store (shaders…) before increasing the price. Let current suscribers (indie and Pro) play with it first. I think it would have been easier to convince people that it is worth it. Then maybe give couple months advance notice to people than in order to get the goodies they will need to pay more for them. Of course I can see the issue where the people would say “wait a minute, I am now asked to pay more for things that I am already playing with…?” Not sure how to resolve this other than say “listen, do not use these new goodies unless you are willing to pay more in 3 months!” In 2-3 months, they can decide if the new goodies is worth it and if not drop to “starter”
3- App visibility is the critical factor for app success.
Anyway, this is just a little rambling of the day!
Mo
If they company wants to earn lets say… 1M per year and starter is totally free, they will raise indie-pro-enterprise-whateverproductpeoplepayfor because actually its the way they get paid. So, like i said before, i’m sure the current “starter” guys are willing to pay at least 100usd for starter version and that’d amortize pro subscription a little bit (600 is too pricy unless we are able to manipule at least basic java/objective-c code).
Speaking just for myself as a longtime Corona user and forum loudmouth over the past year…
The Positive : I think the Free option is great. I have plenty of friends who will say to ship nothing but IAP, but the bottom line is that if I’m a young coder without a C# or networking background, the struggle is just to make a game, not go into advanced monetization. Having Corona’s robust library and the ability to publish sans-splash is a great step while revenues are low.
The Negative : As it stands, I’m probably downgrading to free at my next cycle. For me the whole point of subscribing was Daily Builds, simply because there is just too much work left for Corona Labs to do on the engineering side. On widgets alone Daily Builds access was the difference between me giving a lot of feedback and bug reports, and me being silent about the whole thing because I’d be waiting on a Public Build 6 months away. This isn’t the end of the world - I mean, as of yesterday the latest build was the latest public build - so the playing field is even. But long term, it means I can’t give Corona that same level of feedback because I just won’t be playing with the latest iteration anymore.
Maurício Gomes from Kidoteca here (www.kidoteca.com)
We are already paying the Pro license.
But I am wanting to know why the price got suddenly a lot higher, without any new proper features for Pro. It is not like you have more seats or if Gluon or the new graphics engine is really working.
Sorry, but to me this is more like a quick cash grab.
If you had released features (that I could test even!) and then had said the price is higher, then probably I would happily pay if they are worth it, but right now I feel you are charging for a promise, it is like a Kickstarter, it is throwing money into something you don’t know if it will work or not.
Maurício Gomes
Mauricio - no one is asking you to throw more money in right now. The price is $349 for 3.5 more weeks. Furthermore, as a subscriber, you have *2 more years* where you will be able to renew at $349. So we are not asking you, at all, to throw more cash at us. Let me make that very clear. Your price is not changing until some time in 2015! 
Yes, we did announce that the price will go up in May. This is for 2 reasons:
We think Pro is worth it
Over the next month+ we are adding more functionality to Corona that will make it even more worth it
People often are asking us to give warning ahead of time - and they have done so within this same discussion. Well, that is what we did with the price change AND the coming features
AND, you won’t be affected by it as an existing subscriber. I can’t think of a more favorable situation than that.
As we add many of the new features, they will be made available to Pro subscribers. And they will come in the next month and beyond. That’s a fact.
1- I am pretty sure it is too late now (and maybe not even feasible technically/business wise) BUT why not just add a “Pro Plus” or “Expert” level where people can get the new goodies (graphics, Gluon…) The current Pro could then upgrade to it if they want to for say $200? Again, just rambling here, since I am 110% sure you thought of that during your business decisions making process!
2- I am not sure about the reasoning behind "if people get “successful” with the “starter” then they would automatically switch to Pro.
a- I think it will a very very small % of the total users of “starters” who would call them “successful”
b- Not sure what the Pro version would bring them more (if they already successful) with the “starter”. Of course maybe analytics…
My 99 cents!
Mo
Mo - yes, in theory we could add even more product versions. But that is a tough road - complexity is usually not good. If we end up with many products, with add-ons (as has also been suggested), eventually things get very confusing
As for your second point. If an indie is successful and can stay with Starter, then that’s great. But as already discussed, we will add more features to Pro (e.g., OpenGL 2.0). So if you are successful and want to do more things with graphics, plugins or whatever else, then you might consider the upgrade to Pro. But even if you don’t - we will be happy with many successful indies using Starter - that only helps the community.
Agree 100%. For $600 we should be able to make plugins.
You (Corona Labs) should add that feature to Pro version.
There are so many monetization options out there which would make the developers living easier.
I know they work cause I use them in my native written game but can’t use them in Corona (e.g. Kiip is a great additional revenue stream).
Why don’t you wanna help us make some money ? :blink:
@David, good points! Can’t wait to see what you guys are cooking. Especially in term of graphics!
Mo
Maurício Gomes, if it were a cash grab, we would not have given away what we did for free, nor would we be grandfathering everyone for two years or giving free upgrade’s to the Indie license holders.
2 years I started development on a game and settled on Corona SDK as a simple and fairly cheap option for development.
Now older and a little wiser I can see my time and money would have been better invested in other avenues, alas no point dwelling.
What I find interesting is that as more and more (better and cheaper) options have become available your price continues to rise. $600 for a YEARLY licence is really expensive compared to your competition. The only thing that has kept me here is the fact that I have sunk so much time into this I feel I need to finish it (sunk cost fallacy?).
To me, Corona is positioned as a product for people who want to enter the market and make a quick buck without having to spend much time learning tools and languages.
Corona is a product with an impressive feature set, but when you start to scratch the surface you begin to realize the features are poorly documented and rarely work as advertised. I see a funny little parallel between Corona and the customer that they try to attract in that they are both producing a flashy, yet shallow product with the intention of making some quick money in a volatile marketplace.
This is stark contrast to something like Unity which seems to me to be aiming for a more longer term approach. They are comfortable selling Unity for a one time fee, because they have faith in their product and know that it will continue to sell. They are playing the long game.
Some will argue that the new ‘free’ version of Corona SDK is the perfect option for someone like me. You’re only missing out on IAP right? For now, it looks very attractive (Ignoring the fact that IAP is a deal-breaker for me). But I promise you, they will strip that free version down until you have no alternative but to rent the Pro version. That’s the nature of yearly licencing I suppose, you’re completely at their mercy.
wpetzler - thanks for the thoughts. Let me ask you a couple of questions:
And let me preface this by saying that I think Unity is a fantastic tool.
Say you buy Unity today for a “one time fee”. What will you do in 18-24 months when they come out with a brand new version (e.g., 5.0)?
When you say that there are “cheaper” options out there, who are you referring to? Unity is not cheaper by any means.
I think saying that “features rarely work as advertised” is unfair. Can you be more specific?
Things are changing so quickly in mobile that there are bound to be some things that don’t always exactly work as you would like, are evolving, etc. That by the way is the case with any platform. I challenge you to show me “the perfect platform” - I’ll quickly go into their forum and find threads of people complaining
But I think 27k live apps in all the different app stores are a decent indication that the product works. Many of those apps by the way are very solid apps and I think they are in it for the long haul too.
I won’t argue about “better” because clearly there are different opinions there. If Corona didn’t work for you, then I’m sorry about that. It is working for many thousands of developers.
Finally, I guarantee we will not take away features from Starter. If anything we will may move things from Pro to Starter as things evolve.
That’s exactly what I wrote somewhere a few weeks ago. I tried Corona Enterprise, is nice and everything, but for me - indie, sole developer - it’s overkill.
I don’t need to have access to ObjC every time I’m working on a app. I just need to be able - from time to time - to build simple plugins to
extend Corona. That’s all. 999 is too much for that.
In my opinion, the perfect solution would be:
a Pro+ license, same price of the current pro, that allows you to create plugins.
a basic pro, same thing as now but 349$
And actually, since I guess there are more Pro license than Enterprise, allowing Pro to make and distribute plugins on your Gluon marketshare would probably increase the number of plugins available for your users and what Corona can do… a win-win situation.
That’s exactly what i think… limiting plug-ins to enterprise users is not a good idea, and im pretty sure its way easier to find 5 pro users than 1 enterprise.
Since i’m sure that some enterprise subscriptions were sold already and you can’t change it right now, what about make it so enterprise people can actually sell their plug-in oficially and Pro users can’t? But both of them can make them. Think about it… Lua-based multi-platform engine for mobile with java/objC support, don’t you think that would get enough people (both pro and enterprise) to make you guys earn a lot of money?
Yeah, it could be that enterprise users can sell their plug-ins in Gluon marketplace while Pro users can only release them for free.
More plugins available means more features for Corona and at the same time less work for Coronalabs…
Hi, I like to share my thoughts on corona sdk
1. Comparing with Unity
I think we shouldn’t compare corona sdk with unity at all, we should compare with Marmalade, game salad and other 2D engines.
2.Starter vs Pro
Its good to have, but not something you cant live without. Personally, I seldom use it.
Good to have. Public release is updated only every 3~ 6 months?
You’ll have to pay for most of the plugins. Does Pro user get some free plugins in future?
Probably the main reason to update to Pro.
For now, all you need to decide is whether IAP worth the $600 per year?
From my experience, 500 daily download for a iOS free game earns about 10~40 usd, 200 download earns 3~15 usd, 300 daily download with revmob earns 0~12 usd.
(android market is about 1/3 of iOS earning for the same amount of downloads)
If you are wondering whether IAP can cover the cost, just switch it from paid to free and see how much downloads you are getting after two weeks. 5~50 downloads per day probably earns nothing.
Conclusion:
New users: upgrade Pro only if you get more than 1000 downloads per day
I think Starter is great deal. If you have one or two free app/game that each generates more than 500 daily downloads then go ahead and get Pro and try out IAP. If not, stick with Starter and use revmob ads for free game/app.
Current Indie/pro: continue ** subscription before expires if you make more than 350 usd a year**
For indie, don’t put too much hope in android market. But if you earn more than 350 usd last year then I think you should continue the pro subscription, because we’ll be paying $350 per year instead of $600 usd!
3. Suggestion
Include Offline Build & some free plugins for Pro users to make the deal more attractive.
I guess we have to wait for project Gluon and the new graphics improvements in order to evaluate the new prices better. It would be nice to get a few more information about it though 
A couple of thoughts:
David - thanks for your responses here and elsewhere over the past several months. You are the voice that Corona has needed for awhile and the time you take is building trust with developers like me. Thank you.
I think you guys took a smart approach with the new price structure. I like the product and I’m happy to pay more down the line to support a more robust version of it. I want Corona to prosper so the tool stays around. Those of us that do should give you some latitude to make pricing changes that guarantee growth and profitability for Corona Labs.
I think a lot of the negative feedback stems from folks not understanding that the prices for current subscribers aren’t going to rise for two more years. That wasn’t completely clear from the original post. Delaying the increase for subscribers was a generous, customer-focused decision and I applaud that. Thank you.
More communication would be great, though. When core features like analytics suddenly (1) stop working (2) with very little explanation why and (3) no timetable for when they will return, that is really pretty shoddy customer service for a paid product. It has been about a month and I still don’t understand why analytics aren’t working (other than it is some sort of “server issue”) or when they are going to return. That does not build trust.
And, like many around here, I am hoping that the new-and-improved Corona team starts shipping features much more rapidly. I’m happy to pay more and get more. Lots of the things in the pipeline (Gluon/plugins, in particular) should really be great. But, from a subscriber perspective, Corona builds and ships very slowly relative to others. Despite promising a more agile development cycle last year, 5+ months elapsed between last week’s public build and the previous one in November. Looking at the release notes, there is nothing that big in there, especially for your core iOS developers.
Five months is an eternity these days in software development. I’m not sure what needs to change on Corona’s product development side (maybe focusing on one big new feature at a time, like not re-vamping the graphics while trying to ship Gluon/plugins?), but subscribers no longer trust the Corona team to ship what they say they will in any reasonable time. I know Corona Cloud and enterprise have been a focus for the team. But plugins/Gluon has been discussed for a long time (a year or more?) and it still isn’t here. Will it be launched within three months from now? I don’t know how any subscriber could confidently say it will be (nor has Corona even committed to that timeframe). I’m sure you’re aware of it, but higher prices are going to command a better ability to communicate and ship.
Thanks for all of your work!
I am a pro user, regarding new price plan , I do not have any comment.
But I would like to know when the plug-in function and new graphic engine would be ready?
Because right now the subscription user and free user all using 2013.1076 build , I just hope the plug in function ready ASAP !!