The Loss of Value: Please Stop the Madness

Posted: December 16, 2012

The iTunes store is flooded with thousands of broken, uninteresting, useless apps. Help Apple. Do something, anything, have some standards. Thousands of free or $1 apps have destroyed all concept of value. A bunch of fresh faced grads and even large companies have no idea how to stand up for the worth of their product, Especially when faced against the steaming tidal wave of junk flooding the store.

This is a problem we’ve had before in the games industry. The market became over-saturated with bad games and the entire thing imploded. Nintendo then came in and put limits on publisher releases, promoted quality over quantity, and the market recovered. Apple needs to do the same, even more than Nintendo did.

Digital distribution means that the worst stuff never goes away. There aren’t physical units and the number of apps on the store is a marketing point. At $100 with easy to use and abuse tools, it’s inevitable that most products will be rushed junk made by amateurs. Everyone has to start somewhere, just know I’m not buying your first full programming assignment and you’re making things worse by putting it on the store for free or next to nothing.

There ARE fun games and useful apps on the store, I can count them on my fingers and toes. My phone is devoid of stuff and the perception created by what’s on the app store is that everything is a complete waste of my attention. The top app on iTunes right now is Angry Birds. Nuff said. If that’s the beacon and arbiter of the platform, I stand firm in my position that the app store continues to be over-hyped, over-saturated and lacking a concept of value.