You would think a post with the title “App Store Clutter” would definitely be about the plethora of absolutely shitty iPhone apps that are clogging up the App Store with their sheer suckitude.  But plenty of folks have already discussed that at length and I don’t have any special ideas or solutions.  It’s definitely a complete pain in the ass because I obviously play a ton of iPhone games and the trash just makes it harder to sort through and find the gold.  But like I said, the problem has been covered all over the place.  I’m going to talk about a few things I haven’t seen discussed anywhere.  And I even believe these issues can be resolved without a ton of effort or work on Apple’s part and could really make the App Store a better experience.  So, hey, I doubt if anyone from Apple is reading this…but if you are - hook me up and run with this stuff if you think its worthwhile.

Okay, let’s start off with my problem with microtransactions.  Hold on, hold on - I’m not here to debate whether microtransactions are good or not.  I know I used to go off about them (and I mean off) on my old blog.  But this is a totally different issue and has nothing at all to do with that ancient debate.

There are just a shitload of these things lately in the App Store.  They give you some form of in-game currency or whatever for games you already own.  What’s more they seem to be very popular and selling even better than an optimistic developer would have expected.  The people who sell this stuff seem to wallowing in piles of money and that means we’ll see more and more of them as times go by.  So what?  Well, these things are completely clogging up the App Store.  And I can back it up with real numbers.

[click to continue…]