Tag: Daily deals »

The concept behind the Hello Music website is a simple but brilliant one: provide members with information regarding all manner of deals and sales, on all kinds of musical goodies. The Hello Music app does pretty much the same thing, only on iOS. In other words, with an account on the website and the app on a phone, anyone looking for great deals is covered.

The site, and by extension the application, will per-negotiate discounts on a set (and limited) quantity of various items. These range from tangible objects such as amps, pedals and such, to less tangible things like studio time. Since quantities are limited the deals don't last long (usually around 48 hours), but with a handy-dandy iOS app to monitor these deals on the go it becomes much less of an issue.

Setting up an account on the website is free. The app is free. Suffice it to say, any musicians with even a little interest in savings (and an iPhone, of course) need to take a look at this.

EA are well-known for their sales on the App Store. Usually, around some kind of holiday, there's a sale on many EA Mobile games, often dropping games from $6.99 down to $0.99. So what is EA Mobile supposed to do with this time of year, referred to as the "holiday season?" Have an entire month of price cuts and deals, apparently. Thus, EA Mobile has begun their "Daily Deals" program.

The Daily Deals have kicked off with games dropping to the lowest price point possible: free! The first two free games were The Sims Medieval for iPhone/iPod touch, and Shift 2: Unleashed for both iPhone/iPod touch and iPad. As well, Battlefield 2: Bad Company went on sale for $1.99 for iPhone/iPod touch, and $4.99 for iPad; these are 33% and 50% discounts off the regular price, respectively. As per the title of the program, EA is claiming that there will be new deals each day, although for the first weekend of the promotion these deals remained in effect.

EA is offering a web app for users to keep track of the promotion at their EA Daily Deals web page. A new deal will be made available each day at 9:00 am PST (GMT -8), and EA says that they will vary from more free games, to deep discounts on paid titles.

While people love deep discounts on iOS games, and I myself am not excluded, I have to wonder if the current state of the mobile game business, where those who wish to sell games at premium price points are unable to do so because companies like EA can afford to drop their prices to deep discounts like this. In many ways, it's led to situations like the release of the new Tetris game, which relies heavily on IAP monetization, which is something some vocal users have been staunchly against. Massive regular sales on titles like this might be why that kind of situation is now occurring, and why sales like this exist, because it is difficult to sell titles at price points above $0.99, or even free. When EA, one of the companies that can actually sell titles at higher prices is so willing to have these kinds of fire sales with massive promotion, it does not necessarily portend well for the future of premium-priced apps on the App Store.