During some scheduled downtime, Apple has modified international App Store prices to match current exchange rates. The changes in app pricing have come after recent complaints from Australian customers over the unfair pricing compared to that within the United States’ App Store. Unfortunately, while the changes benefit Australians, residents of Mexico, Norway and the UK have experienced price increases instead.

One of the unfortunate side effects of the iTunes App Store is that it’s spoiling the chirrens. If a game costs anything more than…free…the product comments area will be full of people whining and sniveling about how the app is overpriced. It got so bad that Apple had to limit the number of people who review an app to those who have actually, you know, used it. But if you’re not afraid or embarrassed to click on that “iPod Games” link in the iTunes store, do so now to read some customer reviews. I’ll wager that the majority of the comments are complaints that $4.99 is too much to pay for a game. I know times are bad right now, but come on! $4.99? You’re hard pressed to get a meal at McDonald’s for $4.99 these days.

Those of us who have had the opportunity to browse the App Store have seen that most of the Apps are either 99 cents or are free. Yes, there are applications that cost more and are just better than the cheaper counterparts, but, for the most part, we are in the 99 cent or free arena. Well, Craig Hockenberry has sent a letter to the venerable CEO of Apple. In this letter, Hockenberry claims that the “ringtone app,” or the 99 cent application, is crippling developers such as himself by sacrificing quality to make the applications as cheap as possible. I would have to agree with him on this. How do you make any money as a developer if you put, say, six months of production hours into a project, and in order to make your money back you need to sell 200 thousand downloads? Does not seem to realistic.

Well what about the higher priced applications? The same theory applies I think. If you put 9 to 12 months worth of production hours into a project and sell the app for $4.99 or $9.99, you would only need to sell maybe 100 thousand downloads (maybe less) to break even or, dare I say it, make any money.