(Almost) cashless racing

If you liked the sound of EA’s overhead-view hillbilly dirt-ride Reckless Racing when we reviewed it a few days ago, but were put off by the small amount of content available for the [£1.79] asking price, then we’ve totally got some good news for you.

Sadly it’s not that it’s had another half-dozen tracks added to it, but that the price has been brutally hacked down to a mere [59p]. For that it’s practically worth having just to show off the sparkly teeny-tiny graphics to people. If you’re, y’know, really shallow. And you have a 4th-gen machine. And don’t mind playing every track several times on really easy settings before you can have a go at the hard opponents. But frankly we’d give them that much just to encourage the excellent control options. 59p!

Virtual Concorde

Fancy making a few savings on some top-quality games, but can’t because you have the sheer despicable temerity to live outside the USA? Fear not, gentle and impoverished viewer. Podgamer has some spare tickets for a quick Virtual Concorde flight across the Atlantic, where you can pick up some EA favourites that for some reason they don’t want to sell you as cheaply as your American cousins.

Follow the simple instructions at the link above to get yourself a US App Store account and some US iTunes credit, and then click the jump for the list of games you can get this weekend for [59p] each, saving up to £6 (in total) compared to buying them at their current inflated UK Store prices.

Imminent chart spike alert

This is GT Racing: Motor Academy, a Gran Turismo clone from Gameloft that’s just been reduced from [£2.99] to [59p], having been very prettily updated with Retina graphics support a couple of weeks ago. Watch this puppy fly up the charts like a rocket to the moon. (Starting position: No. 106 in the Games listing, unlisted in the All Apps and Top Grossing top 200s.)

Do beware, though – the recent update takes the app’s size up to a breathtaking 1GB or thereabouts by the time it’s installed, so don’t even bother thinking about it if you’ve got an 8GB machine and might want to have more than two other apps on it at the same time.

Taste the rainbow

(You’re thinking of skittles, not pinball, you idiot. And even then, not the right kind of skittles. Still, I suppose at least we should be grateful it wasn’t a Tommy line, like everyone else who’s ever reviewed any kind of pinball-related game at any time in the last 20 years. I mean, do they think it’s THE FIRST TIME ANYONE’S EVER THOUGHT OF IT or something? Jesus. – Ed)

Bargain-alert time, chums. The fantastic Pinball HD is one of the App Store’s top three pinball games, offering as it does three top pinball games. Or at least, one top pinball game* and two pretty okay ones. But anyway. This used to be three separate pinball games played in uncomfortable portrait mode, until the advent of the iPad and then the iPhone 4′s retina display made it possible for it to be all pretty in landscape mode and for developers Gameprom to put all three games into one app. Which would probably have been possible before too if they’d really wanted to, but anyway.

The point we’re trying to make is, Pinball HD is really good, and is now on sale for a ridiculously low 59p (99c) for either the iPad or iPhone 4 versions, which are normally £1.79 ($2.99) and £1.19 ($1.99) respectively. Even though they’re the same game.

Although now that the newest iPod Touches have Retina screens too, we’d imagine it’ll work on those as well. And although there are two separate versions, we’re not sure what happens if you run the iPhone one on the iPad. But we do know that the iPad one definitely WON’T run on the iPhone, so don’t buy that one. Unless you have an iPad, obviously. Unless you have an iPad AND an iPhone, in which case you might as well get the one that’ll run on both. If it will. And definitely DEFINITELY don’t buy the three individual games, which are inexplicably still on sale for 59p each. Man, this got complicated.

One that almost got away

Somehow I failed to spot Peggle being slashed to 59p (99c) a few days ago during my normally-diligent bargain trawling. I can only assume I was drunk on heroin and Orangina again.

It seems to be a promotional offer to celebrate the addition of Peggle Nights as an in-app purchase (£1.79/$2.99), so there’s no knowing how long it will last. Well, not until afterwards, anyway. But 59p Peggle is as close to a no-brainer as it gets.

EDIT: The Peggle Nights IAP is now on reduced-price sale for 59p (99c).

On App Store pricing

Over recent months, we’ve railed on more than one occasion about the sort of idiots who constantly try to force App Store prices higher, because they don’t understand the people who buy stuff in the App Store. But it’s always been hard to definitively refute the argument that cheap apps make less money, because there’s rarely been an opportunity to properly compare oranges with oranges.

There is now.

Pac-Man has every possible advantage in terms of trying to charge a higher price. It’s arguably the best-known videogame of all time, and along with Space Invaders it’s certainly (in general videogaming terms) the best-known one that you can buy in the App Store. Anyone buying Pac-Man knows exactly what they’re going to get (and in the unlikely event that they don’t, there’s a free Lite version), so there’s no element of being put off by the unknown, rather than by the fact that it’s (relatively) expensive.

Another pertinent fact is that in App Store terms as well as absolute ones, Pac-Man is ancient. It’s been in the App Store for almost two years (launching at an ambitious $9.99), and has maintained respectable chart placings for most of that time. So if – as we’re often told by stupid people – customers judge pricing in absolute terms (rather than in the context of what competing apps sell for), Pac-Man hasn’t been hampered by its premium cost.