I hope that Apple will realise that these games are hurting its brand and products and will kick them out of the App Store just like they did with fart apps. I don’t see what kind of business advantage allowing these games gives them.
It’s their “walled garden” and it’s their responsibility to take care of it when it’s overran by weed.
But it's a small minority that don't like them. They successful because they're popular. If Apple removes them, people will freak out! And maybe even buy an Android device.
My theory is that they aren’t successful because they’re popular, they’re successful because the business model is lucrative. If what they say is true and the bulk of their revenue comes from a small portion of their “customers”, they need to be a lot less popular to be successful (both in terms of downloads and revenue) than traditional, payed games.
I think they might segregate the to expose others better but they aren't about to ditch their biggest earners (or piss off their customers who love these so much they keep spending money on them).
At the end of the day, Apple makes money by selling iPhones and iPads. App Store revenues are rounding error. The App Store has one function for Apple: to help selling more iPhones and iPads. (In Q3 2012, iPhone and iPad sales constituted 72% of Apple’s revenue, while the iTunes Store, which includes the App Store, but also music, movies and TV shows, was only 6%.)
Sooner or later, parents are going to start making a lot of noise about the waste of their childrens' lives, and the media are going to start campaigning for the government to Do Something (tm). Legislation is a terribly blunt instrument. Apple might find it very much worth their while to take action before governments take it for them.
The noise that parents make is not going to be the waste of their children's lives. It is going to be over the fact that these companies are preying on children.
There have been a number of cases of kids discovering that they can make in game purchases really easily, doing so a lot, and by the time the parents find out thousands of dollars have been spent.
See http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/04/parents-sue-a... for one lawsuit based on this. Admittedly it was over a bug where kids could spend thousands of dollars on a "free" app without needing the password. But kids learn parents' passwords all of the time. How long until there is a lawsuit over the problem of kids who got the necessary password running up huge bills?
It’s their “walled garden” and it’s their responsibility to take care of it when it’s overran by weed.