My pro role was extended as mentioned by two months, but if I start the simulator, I get a message, that my pro account expires in 2 days, which refers on the old date!
Why that? If my role expire in two days, I have to pay 599 for the new one? Please clarify.
Hello,
I have been a developer with Pro subscription for over a year now, just recently renewed.
I am happy to hear about the pricing insulation for Pro developers (we get two years at the original price.)
It is concerning to me to read that Corona did not offer a two year insulation to Indie developers as well.
Yes, they do get a free upgrade to pro, but they don’t get to conduct “business as usual” for the next two years like Pro developers.
In fact they will be feeling the monetary impact of this change at their next renewal. In the best case scenario this is next year and the worse case is May 1, 2013. After that point any Indie Developer who has created an app with in app purchases will now be forced to pay the extra (350 Pro - 200 indie) = 150?. (this includes people who are updating released apps and those about to publish their finished products).
So my suggestion is to insulate the current Indie developers at the original price for two years, just like the Pro developers. They get access to features at a reduced price just like us.
Here is a good article on Punch Quest which is one I remember very well - It had 600,000+ downloads and failed to bring in a profit through its freemium model, causing the devs to do a complete u-turn post launch and change it into a paid app.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3577838/punch-quest-iphone-game-struggle
So my suggestion is to insulate the current Indie developers at the original price for two years, just like the Pro developers. They get access to features at a reduced price just like us.
I was an iOS indie, now Pro because the indie plan is no more. While I will miss the $199 plan and price (which I would have resubscribed too) I’m 90% sure I’ll resub at $349.
Instead of being angry at the lack of an iOS only plan that I was on, I have chosen to embrace it. In the past 5 hours I have amended my latest 2 apps to work on Android/Amazon phones & tablets. Redone some art work, learnt some of the android basics and now hopefully should release on Google Play & Amazon very very soon after I get a few friends to beta test for me.
I really do not wish to make this post a Free 2 Play pros/cons argument.
I am just saying that devs such as myself (and it seems florca above) would love the option to have IAP without having to go pro level. We liked the Indie Dev plan because we only desired to publish to iOS and use the IAPs. Corona is taking this option off the table.
Try logging out and back in. Sometimes you need to force it to refresh.
Can someone from Corona answer this? If Gluon plug-ins will cost money _on top of_ the existing price hike, it’s only making matters worse small devs.
This what I don’t get, David. You’re citing a developer who is getting millions of sales, so that’s exactly the type of paying customer you should want. Instead, you’re arguing that he should be able to get by with a _free_ license, while hobbyists who want additional features (like IAP) and who _don’t_ get millions of downloads should pay $350-$600. Doesn’t that seem sort of backwards? Customers who are making good money should be paying to use Corona, while customers who _aren’t_ making money should not be paying as much. Seeing as Corona has analytics built in, why isn’t that being leveraged to charge users accordingly?
worked!
thank you
Wow, you made the point better than I ever could have. I agree 100%.
WyldKard - good questions.
Plugins - it is likely there will be all type of plugins (eventually). Some will be free since the service provider wants you to use the plugin to access their service (e.g., for monetization). Some will be charged for - and within those it could be a single up front payment (e.g., some functionality that won’t change, perhaps something like QR Codes) and some may be a subscription (e.g, functionality that will need to be updated regularly over time). That is how envision the marketplace.
Monetization - yes, like any business, we want to make sure that if the developer using our tools makes money, we also make money. That’s the whole point. So you are 100% right there. That means that we (CL) have to decide how to “price discriminate”. The term doesn’t sound friendly, but that’s what everyone does. The thought process is then as follows:
what features are *usually* (there is no *always*) used by more sophisticated developers (e.g., studios)?
by identifying one or two of those features and putting them into Pro then we can try to make money (deservedly) when someone uses our tool to make a lot of money
by putting everything else in Starter, we enable people to publish and hopefully be successful, and then hopefully by Pro
That is why IAP is in Pro and not Starter.
And we feel that still leaves room for Starter users to make some (and hopefully lots) of money via ads and by charging for the apps. I mention Joe as an example of a developer using just the latter and being very successful to show it is possible. There are also many people making lots of money with ads.
Now, given what I said above, wouldn’t we (CL) want to also restrict ads to Pro and not allow Starter users to charge for their apps? Sure - if we wanted to extract all value possible. But that wouldn’t be good business either. We want indies using Starter to have a real chance at success. Both because we like Indies and want to encourage them, but also because if they are successful, they will upgrade to Pro and we will then also make money.
The key is that there is never a completely clean way to price discriminate. But this is our best shot at it, while still fostering a vibrant indie community.
As it stands today, I bet way more than 50% of the apps that have been made with Corona are doable with Starter.
The bottom line is, you need to generate hundreds or thousands of downloads per day to make some serious money. Having or not having IAP implemented in your app when it first launches is not going to make any difference to your ability to generate those downloads.
You have everything you need with the starter package to do that - the sticking point will be getting visibility for your app.
Free-to-paid IAP conversion is between 1-3% on our apps, and as I suggested on the other thread, if you are generating enough downloads to make missing out on 1-3% IAP conversion a big deal, then you can probably fund your Corona license through ad revenue (particularly Revmob).
Not true. If you have IAP, you can make your app free which is sure to get more downloads than a paid app. Again, I am not talking about converting someone from a free app to pay to “open the rest of the app”
I am talking about the specific ability to add purchaseable characters and items to a game. Think Jetpack Joyride. A free game but you can buy costumes, hats, upgrades, etc. That is the type of game I am talking about.
The thinking is people can get your game for free which removes any barriers to them trying the game. If they like it, they can buy these things to make it even more fun. I am NOT talking about Free to paid conversion. I agree with you that free to paid conversion doesn’t really work unless you have massive amounts of downloads but that is not what I am talking about here.
And again, I am just saying that people would be willing to pay the $200 for IAP alone so why not make it available to us in a a la carte sort of way?
Only good part about Starter is that new people won’t have to pay even 1 dollar to release their apps, since IAP isn’t used by new developers, and its used more for companies and good developers or at least developers with some kind of experience in the matter, if not they fail miserably.
So, since we have to pay $600 per year ($250 more than we used to pay), I think you guys should start focusing more on Pro users, maybe some kind of core-able code for developing our own plugins, just not full featured like enterprise. Also, since we can install corona in just 2 PCS as Pro users, enterprise users should be able to install it on more PC’s and thats usually why companies pay more for the same program, but they are able to use it in a bunch of pcs and make a team work together.
If you guys made it so enterprise users can make plugins in java/objective-c, why we can’t use such wonderful feature? That’s what i don’t get. I’d be more than happy paying $600 (expensive but still) with that.
Just my 2 cents.
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.
Will there be details released on the new graphical capabilities before the deadline for buying Pro at a discount? I really would love to know this.
Anyway, great work and I continue to be amazed by the depth of features and ease of use.
I think this price change is fair enough personally. A little too fair if you ask me but I can’t complain then can I?