John Watson, one of the developers of The Banner Saga, had this to say about iOS pricing:

Apple is frustrated, along with everybody else, about the mentality that’s gone rampant in mobile app markets, where people don’t want to pay anything… They want to pay as little as possible. They think that four dollars is an exorbitant amount to pay for a game, which is very illogical considering most people’s lifestyles. They’ll spend $600 on an iPad, and $4 on a coffee, drop $20 on lunch, but when it comes to spending four or five dollars on a game, it’s this life-altering decision. I’m frustrated with that too.

Personally, I understand where he’s coming from, and I’m not even a game developer. It’s absurd to me that people call out things like Monument Valley at $4 as “expensive”. Taking it up a bit, we have Chrono Trigger at $10. Chrono Trigger is generally considered to be one of the best RPGs ever, and I’m personally glad that Square keeps re-releasing it for people to play that missed it the first time around (or the second or third at this point). Currently, the ways you can play chrono trigger are in a super nintendo, assuming you still have one. this’ll run you over $100 now, and it would have been about $80 then, not adjusted for inflation. It’s on the Wii’s Virtual Console for $8. The next version was for the Playstation, and that one can be had for $10 on PSN. When it came out, it was a full-priced release ($40-50) packaged with Final Fantasy 4. Up next was the version I played, on the DS. This one had some additional content, and was again a full-priced game ($35), this time by itself. If you want this one now, it’s still about $30.

The iOS version has the expanded content of the DS version, and is still $10. in terms of value per dollar (if you think that way), it beats probably every AAA release of the past 2-3 years. It’s certainly longer lasting than a trip to the movies, and costs less, to boot.

For more posts about… everything, check out the Blaugust Initiative. For an alternate opinion about this in particular, see Doone’s post about retro games.