i do see the distinct advantage of using your free product to promote your paid product. That’s pretty smart. ngmoco is doing that with its games – get Topple (the #1 free app in the store) for free, so they can tell you all about their $10 Rolando game. (Both games are lots of fun, FYI – and both worth your time and money).

Thanks to their promo, ngmoco is now a trusted name on my radar. i know that the next time ngmoco releases a game, it will likely be a worthwhile purchase. That’s what i want to really strive for. i want people to believe in our *company*, if not our games. Branding is critical.

Granted, i gather ngmoco is a great deal larger than we are …

Thanks for the links, Mike!

I take your point about paying extra for portability. I don’t own a handheld console (I fear I would never read a book again if I bought one) but I’m happy to pay £5/month for mobile Internet.

I was a little surprised that you’d provide a free Flash version on your site, but I think this is just conditioning from years of shareware nag screens ending “…and much much more!”. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of nice to know exactly what I’m going to get for my money. Also, today I read on the Wolfire blog that their sales of Lugaru actually increased when they gave it away for free.

Good luck! I hope you’ll keep us all updated on how this works out.

We’re actually going to try something a bit novel with our iPhone game. My aim is to simultaneously release a crippled free trial version alongside the full version, which will be priced at a daring $5. Then we’ll release the full, unfettered version of the game in Flash on our site.

The free crippled iPhone trial is for Mac-heads who never leave their phone. The Flash version is a goodwill gesture that will hopefully drive sales – the game we’re developing is great to play on the go, so we’re essentially asking our customers to pay $5 for the convenience of portability.

i don’t know about you, but i know i’ve paid extra for portability. i’ve bought an RPG game called Disgaea twice – once on PS2, once on the Nintendo DS – so that i could play it on the go (ie on the toilet). Other folks have done the same thing with the Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros. and Chrono Trigger franchises. Brand power helps these titles out a lot, sure, but there’s something very appealing about taking your games with you wherever you go.

i’m also hoping to achieve a weird psychological effect with this free online Flash version. Currently, people aren’t buying Flash games for $0.99. They’re either paying $10-20 on BigFish, Miniclip, etc, or they’re playing (mostly) lower-quality titles for free. By offering a Flash version of our game, i am hoping to associate the more rational $10-20 price point for excellent online entertainment than this ridiculous $0.99 rut the App Store is facing, and which threatens iPhone development with the same issue that’s driving us out of original Flash game development.