Great, thank you. One last question (out of curiosity), how does Corona know the generated revenues of its developers?
JonPM - we don’t. It’s purely a licensing restriction (as opposed to a technical one). But it is a fairly standard thing to have a licensing agreement with those terms. Unity has very similar terms for its “free” tier.
maybe next year I will giveup Pro account to Starter, I think I will not using store and plugin, I don’t mind the splash screen, it’s no big deal with it…
this changing is not fair to Pro license member!
Is that fair to the existing Pro License owner???
Raymondcheng - I don’t think I understand your question.
And also note: we are not forcing a splash screen. All products, including Starter, can have a custom splash screen.
agreed @paul max and the magic marker should convince about unity’s 2d capabilities, http://maxandthemagicmarker.com/demo/
I wondered why it was crashing for me and then saw the text:
*Please be aware that some browsers have a tendency to crash – if you experience any problems please try an alternate browser*
I’m running Chrome under Win8 so maybe that combination isn’t supported yet. It’s a nice game when it works but it’s not filling me with much confidence.
I know I posted this on the other page just now, but I wanted to make sure my question is answered. I was wondering how corona was going to handle educational liscenses now? Are they the same price or have they gone up? Can I renew it for $250 in a year if I’m still in college? Thanks.
Dear Corona,
Thank you for the free option, but your team really should’ve consulted a behavioral economist before making these decisions on pricing. Once people see “FREE”, they are compelled to choose the free option no matter how irrational it may be. Not only that, when you originally set the value of something, people cannot separate that original value from the new value being set no matter how useful the product may be to them (think how angry people get with rumors of having to pay for things like Facebook or Twitter). In this way, you’re hurting your own business as new customers will only choose free and many current customers can’t justify the difference in value from the original pricing.
See Dan Ariely’s research:
“I developed an appreciation for the surprising power of FREE! from the experiments my colleagues and I conducted on how people respond to things when their cost is zero (included in Predictably Irrational). For instance, when we set up a temporary candy stand and sold mouthwatering Lindt truffles (which usually cost around 50 cents) for 15 cents and ho-hum Hershey Kisses for 1 cent, 73% of the chocolate-lovers who stopped by made the rational decision and chose the superior and highly discounted Lindt truffles. But when we lowered the price by 1 cent for each item—resulting in a cost of 14 cents and 0 cents respectively—suddenly demand reversed and 69% of consumers chose the free Kisses.”
Consider that Adobe offers a subscription for most of its very expensive software plus Cloud storage for around $30/month, nearly half of what Corona is asking for a few key features to add to a free SDK. The value logic doesn’t add up. Sorry to make the comparison, but this is the perspective of a seasoned Flash/HTML game dev working in advertising for 10 years looking to make a living off of mobile games.
And now I’m off to learn Cocos2d!
theginbin - thanks for the comments, but let me give you my take on it.
Ariely’s research around the truffle and Kisses shows that people react “irrationally” around something that is *free*. In other words, more people choose the free product that you would otherwise rationally expect (this is also what Daniel Kahneman calls “fast thinking”). On that we agree.
Now, according to your post this will hurt us because people will choose Corona SDK Starter (free) over Corona SDK Pro in an irrational way. But you make 2 assumptions:
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That our universe is people choosing only among Corona versions - which is clearly not true. We live in a universe with other options (free and non-free) as well. So according to the same research, there will now be more people choosing free Corona over other (non-Corona, non-free) options. Which is exactly what we want - we want even more people to choose Corona.
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That people make a hasty (or potentially irrational) decision around what development platform to use. This may or may not be true. If it is, then we are right in having a free option as more people will adopt it (over competitors). If it isn’t true, then this is all a non-issue.
Now - the remaining step, getting people to upgrade from Starter (free) to Pro is also an exercise in pricing, but has nothing to do with the Ariely free vs. non-free research. Once someone has developed an app and is making money (or wants to make money), it is likely that they will take a more rational approach (slow thinking). The *FREE bias* will not have an impact on most at that point - they will make a decision to upgrade if the benefits they get will outweigh the costs. So it is important for us (Corona Labs) to make sure Corona SDK Pro has features that will let people make better apps/more money. And we believe that’s what we are doing.
Finally, let me ask you: what is your decision to use Cocos 2D based on?
I think arguing about the new structure is pretty pointless at this time. It is already implemented, and I doubt it will change anytime soon. Obviously the smart thing for CL to do is to continue with the current structure and gather all the relevant data. Then they will reassess the financial impact and at that point consider changing the structure. What we say here won’t hold much weight, it’s what the customers do.
cjc83486 - EDU pricing has not changed. You can see more info here:
Thanks! I looked there, but I didn’t know if it was updated. Do you know if EDU will stay at $250 after May 1st?
@spideri - doesnt work for me on chrome either on win7, but thats not the point and has nothing to do with building confidence of unity or of the game (not that I’m defending either) . Use a different browser as it suggests.
Yes - we are keeping the EDU price at $249. That is not changing.
Is Corona EDU pricing available to high school students or only college students? Also, does an EDU license restrict commercial use of the SDK?
It’s available to both high-school and college students. And the subscription is exactly the same, no restrictions for edu.
Now that is pretty awesome!
I am very impressed with all the updates lately: Cloud, iAds, Widget 2.0, Plugins… It has literally everything for an indie developer and the programming language is easy and straight forward. I don’t think I could have ever gotten the drive to start my game without Corona.
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.
Try logging out and back in. Sometimes you need to force it to refresh.