In App Purchase Amazon, Kindle, Nooks

Solar2D Monetization (in-app purchases, ads, etc.)
#101

David, yes, Amazon IAP is one of my top requests.  But I’m hardly alone here as it happens to be the #3 most requested feature on your own feature request form with 231 votes.  

http://feedback.coronalabs.com/forums/188732-corona-sdk-feature-requests-feedback/filters/top

Chartboost is pretty high up there too, with 152 votes.  Instead you gave us Tap for Tap, which had 0 votes.  It was never requested.  (not intended as a slam on Tap for Tap, I hope it turns out to be a useful service.  But it’s not mature yet.)

I guess the transparency I’m looking for is some insight into why or how you guys are making these priority decisions.  What is the purpose of the feedback/voting feature if not to guide your development resource management and schedule?  Now that you have released a free version of Corona SDK it seems imperative to your business that you provide value to the pro version so more people upgrade.  Why not give the users what they want?  

To be clear, I am rooting for Corona Labs and want you to succeed.  But it seems like you are pissing off a lot of existing customers by not acting on delivering basic feature requests, even after promising them, and getting lost in the weeds developing features nobody asked for.  

#102

My understanding is the new Fortumo plugin covers *all* Android devices on all stores.  Their website says that Amazon is one of them:

Which marketplaces does Fortumo support?

Developers who work with Fortumo distribute their apps in almost any marketplace, ranging from Google Play to Getjar, Amazon and other 3rd party or mobile operator app stores. 

of course they throw out the caveat on support within these marketplaces…

Different app-stores might have different policies or practices regarding mobile operator billing. For latest info, please check their terms or conditions or e-mail us at support@fortumo.com
 

So it’s pretty clear that they know that their entire business model breaks that of the App marketplaces and they they are expecting to get wacked at any time.

It seems like the release of Fortumo was to appease everyone looking to get Amazon IAP.  Personally (assuming apps with Fortumo get approved on the Amazon Marketplace), I find it to be a decent stop gap measure for trying to get developers some sort of way to collect funds in games, but I’m quite wary of implementing it, as the service could get shut down at anytime by the Marketplace.  Then where would that leave us?  With an app no longer able to support IAP, which would leave us with a major crisis on our hands.  

My intuition is that Marketplaces will most likely stop companies like Fortumo by rejecting apps with any code of theirs at submissions time.  It seems that doing something like suppressing requests to Fortumo servers (essetially banning IPs) for apps that slipped through, wouldn’t be something that’d be able to do (legal inability due to privacy rights or inability to access phone/tablet features this way, etc).  I’d guess if I got approved, we’d be OK until we switched over to an official Amazon IAP, when released by Corona.

Would that be a correct assumption?  Or am I totally off base here?  

Bottomline, Fortumo doesn’t seem like a viable long-term payment plan strategy and I’m with everyone else here in wanting official Amazon IAP support and soon!

#103

Hardboiled,

I know Amazon is pretty high up in the feedback tool, which is why we want to have it (and will have it) soon.

But we can’t just have our engineers write a bunch of plugins and then embark on maintaining them long into the future - that would slow down development on the core platform that everyone relies on. Optimally we want the vendor involved, or a marketplace that will encourage others to write plugins. We are working on both.

I’ll challenge the assertion that we are lost in the weeds developing features nobody asked for. Again, everyone thinks the features they need are the most important ones. But there are thousands of you. So I’m not sure what would fall into the “nobody asked for” category. What I’ll say is that, as a platform, we are in a position were we have to balance all of the following:

  • maintaining/updating core features

  • future core features (e.g., graphics 2.0)

  • platform-specific (e.g., iOS, Android) features

  • 3rd party services (e.g., monetization)

It’s not easy. Now, that’s our job, so I’m not whining about it. I just want to be clear about the fact that we are bound to disappoint some of you from time to time (often it seems) :slight_smile:

But rest assured - I hear you on the urgency of Amazon IAPs. And other monetization partners.

For what it’s worth (and I know I’ll get grief from someone for this) - you can integrate any service you want today if you use Corona Enterprise.

David

#104

I base my assertion that “nobody asked for” Tap for Tap simply because I can’t find mention of it in the feedback/voting tool, nor in a search of the forums.  Same for SponsorPay, Inneractive, and BitOp plugins.  Is there some other way for customers to weigh in with feature or plugin requests that I’m not aware of?

I don’t doubt that somebody, somewhere, sent you a private IM asking for Tap for Tap and so you chose to spend your limited resources developing a plugin for it, but why does that trump releasing one for Amazon IAP, which many of your customers have been publicly asking for since last year as evidenced by this forum thread and hundreds of votes cast for it?   Maybe “lost in the weeds” is too strong but “tone deaf to customer requests” doesn’t sound too good either.  So I think you should add one more bullet point to your platform balance equation:

-listen to and respond in a timely way to overwhelmingly popular customer requests :)  

If I read between the lines it sounds like you are waiting until you get the plugin marketplace in place and hope to rely on an Enterprise customer to create and maintain the Amazon plugin.  If that is the case then I strongly encourage you to NOT wait for that and just pay one of your Enterprise users to create the plugin now.  I’m sure the work is already done by someone anyway so maybe just give them a year extension on their Enterprise license in exchange for providing the plugin.  Heck, some valiant Enterpriser might do it for some Corona swag and a 6-pack.   I’ll provide the 6-pack if it will help! (They probably won’t want my used Corona T-Shirt)

And since I’m already here I’ll give you the grief you requested over your upsell to Corona Enterprise.  The whole reason I started using CoronaSDK was so I wouldn’t have to muck around with native development on multiple platforms.  In fact, I probably don’t have the technical chops to do that even if I wanted to.  I’ve given Corona Labs over $1K over the years so you guys can deal with that mess.  Asking me for another $1K just so I can get my hands really dirty and probably fail? Boo.

#105

Hardboiled - one important piece of info is that we did not develop the Tap for Tap plugin. They did. Hence your assumption that we chose to spend resources on Tap for Tap at the expense of Amazon (or something else) is inaccurate.

Your suggestion to get an Enterprise developer to just do the plugin in exchange for “x” is a good one, but somewhat unrealistic. Here is why: what happens when, 2 months later, Amazon/VendorY puts out a new version of their SDK? Do we get another developer to do the update for another “x”? And what if there is a bug or something “stops working”? Who is responsible for fixing it?

Those are the types of problems you face when you do a platform used by many developers. We have to make sure that whoever builds the plugin will be there to fix and support it. Otherwise, I’ll be embroiled in another thread much like this one, but worse :slight_smile:

#106

David, it is good, and important, information to know how these plugins come about.  I will gladly send an email to Amazon encouraging them to develop the plugin if that will help.  Do you have a contact at Amazon you can share who would be receptive to that request?  

Your rational for not using an Enterprise developer to create the plugin because they might not support it in the future holds true for anyone developing the plugin, including CoronaLabs! Amazon itself could create the plugin but then not support it, or update it, or fix bugs.  You will still get the irate threads here when it stops working and yet be powerless to fix it.  So my first choice would be for you guys to do it internally, or at least retain the source, so you can do something if the plugin breaks.  If an Enterprise developer creates the plugin, and at some point it fails, you could simply find another willing Enterpriser to provide a new plugin.  Or maybe instead of giving away a year license in exchange, dangle a carrot to incentivize the developer to maintain the plugin by extending their Enterprise License each month for as long as they maintain and update the plugin.   Just thinking out loud here, there’s probably other ways to do it.

#107

Hardboiled - yes, i agree. But that is why setting up a way to get the plugin where we know that things will be well supported for some amount of time (e.g., a year) is important. And it can’t be done super quickly, especially if a big company is involved.

I get your frustration with this. I also wish we could do it faster. 

But thanks for your well-reasoned points. It’s good to have discussions like this.

#108

It comes down to which vendors are willing to make a plugin.  Tap For Tap was all over making a plugin to get people into their network, that’s the simple reason it was released and not Chartboost.  Now if Chartboost steps up and says sure we will make one, you will see one, otherwise you are going to need to wait for a Corona customer with Enterprise to do one.  This is going to be the way things are going to be going forward for most SDK.  Or as Corona always says, “You can get Enterprise” and do it yourself (something that 99.99% of the Corona Customer base does not want to do).

#109

This is easily mitigated by just hiring a new dev to strictly work on critical plugins.  This should be easy as they just need to know iOS/Android and some Corona and not learn your entire system to develop for Corona Core.  Rather than using resources that are already trained on Corona Core.

Corona’s biggest limitation is it’s lack of support for XYZ SDK and the inability to do anything about it unless you buy Enterprise and know how to code for iOS, Android, and Corona.  Most Corona customers don’t know how to and do not want to.  But not supporting Chartboost, TapJoy or even core IAP for major app stores that do 90% the volume of Apple is a huge limiting factor.

You nearly doubled the cost of Corona Pro for your best customers (paying) and tripled it for your Indie customers to finance the  onslaught of free users, it’s time to bring value.  We all know about 1% if that are going to be Enterprise users, and of that probably 1% of them will want to develop plugins for the community rather than just work on their projects.

#110

What I find funny, there is a Corona Enterprise user who got Chartboost working and Amazon IAP in like two days for both of them.  Yet this is something Corona can’t spend a little time doing themselves and would probably take two hours with experienced devs. 

#111

cspence - I get your point, but things are never quite that easy. What a Corona Enterprise developer might do for his own internal use is not at all like what we would have to do to make sure it works for all Corona developers, is maintainable, fits in with other APIs, etc. etc.

In any case - don’t misunderstand me: I’m not disputing the core argument - I agree that everyone would like this functionality available now, and I would too. We are working hard to get there.

#112

My gut feeling your experienced devs can work at minimum 5x faster than he can.

#113

I’d like to point out that, in the case of Amazon IAP plugin, it only has to be made to work on Android/Kindle device platforms.  Not having to make it work for iOS devices, or the Simulator, would seem to remove a large chunk of the complexity for developing this particular plugin.  Again, Amazon states it only takes 10 minutes to wire it up natively, and an experienced CoronaLabs dev who’s perhaps actually worked on the plugin architecture should be able to make it work on one platform pretty quickly, no?

#114

Hi Clockworked24.7,

It’s a valid topic you raised, but since some of you assumptions are not 100% valid wanted to address them.

We at Fortumo are helping major app developers to do in-app payments on different platforms for already 6 years. In addition to billing, Fortumo provides premium distribution to different carrier, OEM and 3rd party appstores and our 60k developers, 300+ carriers or partners see this as short term business.

Regarding Amazon then it is completely open appstore. Developer can use 3rd party billing and ad services non of our merchants have had any issues on Amazon appstore or any others where they have uploaded their apps.

Martin from Fortumo

#115

Hey Martin,

Welcome to the forums!  :)

Thanks for clarifying the history of Fortumo to date.  I’m sure it won’t happen tomorrow, but if you guys start eating a bigger piece of these AppStore’s lunch, I’m sure that policy will change real fast.  They are in business to make money, so if someone is funneling off that income, they will definitely “plug the leak”, so to speak.

Glad to hear that nothing has occurred to date.  I feel a bit better about at least considering implementing your service for IAP on our Android games.

Thanks Martin.

Regards,

Scott D Brooks

#116

Please, please, please.  I was asking for this months ago.  Kindle market is hot.  Has been since last December.  Thank goodness some others started chiming in.

#117

So now at least we have Nook IAP covered with the new Fortumo plugin.  Thanks CoronaLabs!

But I’m still concerned about the lack of support for the Amazon IAP API.  Fortumo seems to be the way to go for IAP on Nook, but it’s not the “native” way to handle IAP on Kindle.  And while the other monetization features added recently via plugins are welcome, imo those should have taken a back seat to getting the Amazon IAP API enabled for us.  As mentioned in this thread, the Amazon app market is hot (personally selling 10x more on Amazon than Apple or Google Play store), and Amazon Coins have really juiced it.  

Is Amazon IAP coming?  Timeframe?  Amazon claims it takes 10 minutes to wire up their IAP, so it should take a Corona engineer 20 minutes to make a plugin out of it, right?  :wacko:

#118

I have a gut feeling Amazon is developing a plugin for Corona.

#119

Please make an IAP plugin. Like others have mentioned, the Amazon Appstore is exploding right now, and we all need an IAP plugin for our apps! Especially with Amazon Coins!

#120

Hey guys - we do want to support Amazon IAP and will do so. Don’t have an ETA yet though.