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twesterm on 09 October 2009
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famousringo said:

@ Twesterm

I guess what I don't understand is how it's any harder to scroll down a list than it is to stroll down an aisle, considering retailers don't post user reviews and ratings on their shelves. Nor do I understand why the existence of free software and demos is portrayed as a bad thing when it's completely separate from the paid offerings. You'd think a well-stocked supply of free software would be a good thing.

If your point is that you often need to get information from a web site or a friend's recommendation before you can find a good game, it stands that you often need to do the same to find a good retail game. The difference is that you can simply punch that recommendation into a search field and get it instead of driving to a store, asking a clerk or rummaging through a bin, and hoping the game you're looking for is in stock.

Personally, I just pick the category I'm interested in and scroll down the page looking at user scores and reviews. I don't need a GoNintendo, an IGN or a VGChartz to find good iPhone games like I do with my DS.

Take any recent iPhone commercial for example.  Those commercials love to boast that there are 75,000 apps but any user is only going to see a couple hundred of those at the most unless they know what they're looking for.

Yes, the app store is split into many different nicely organized catagories, but you still see the same apps over and over again unless you specifically search for something.  For some sort of app that has a purpose like a tip calculator, you can find that by a search, but you can't type in cool game or casual platformer and get a list of those things.  If you don't know what game you're looking for you aren't going to choose from the thousands upon thousands of iPhone games, you're going to choose from a fairly small list with many of those being crap or nothing more than time wasters.