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Posted at 9:46pm on 27 Mar 2012
Upgrade Pricing on the Mac App Store
Will Shipley makes the case for upgrade pricing on the Mac App Store:
http://blog.wilshipley.com/2012/03/mac-app-store-needs-paid-upgrades.html
It's a solid argument, but he fails to mention the solution already in place for this - in-app-purchase.
To release a paid upgrade to an existing app, the developer can simply make it available as an in-app-purchase within the original app.
This may be slightly awkward for new users, who then have to first buy the app and then pay for the upgrade, but this can be solved by making the app itself a free "demo" and having all users buy the "real" version as an IAP.
So the process is:
- User downloads the demo
- User buys IAP to get the full feature set
- When version 2 is released, version 1 IAP is disabled and version 2 IAP is made available
New users just buy whichever IAP is enabled to get the latest version. Existing users can keep any IAP they've previously bought, but must pay again for the latest upgrade.
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