Apple App Store to undergo complete overhaul, with ads and subscriptions for games

The move appears to be aimed at generating more money for Apple – but also for the game developers who have recently complained about how the App Store distributes revenues

Apple's App Store recent ran a special promotion to coincide with World Aids Day (Getty Images)

Apple has launched a complete overhaul of its App Store, introducing adds and ways for people to subscribe to games.

The company made the announcement just days ahead of its Worldwide Developer Conference, where it would usually be expected to announce such changes.

But the company jumped ahead by launching a range of changes to the software store, most of which appear to be aimed at making more money for both Apple and the developers that use its store.\

The company will now allow developers to pay for ads that will show while people search for apps. Those will show up alongside the normal search results, but with a different colour background and a label marking them out as paid-for.

And those developers will also be able to sell their apps on a subscription basis – allowing people for the first time to set up automatically renewing subscriptions as a way of paying for apps. That has been launched alongside a new revenue sharing scheme that will allow developers to keep more money from those subscriptions.

That subscription model will be available for the first time to developers of games, which could lead to a whole new way of paying for them. At the moment, many games are paid for through a “free to play” model – which lets people download and then play the game, but pay for extra features or bonus content.

The changes are intended to keep the developers of the 1.5 million apps on the store happy. Though people spent more than $20 billion in it last year, developers have complained that huge size is making it harder than ever to actually get seen by those customers.

As such, it will also concentrate on improving the normal search results, it said. It will make it easier for people to find new apps and will ensure that the ads can’t dominate results.

The company has been looking to build up its services business – like Apple Music as well as the App Store – in an attempt to provide more reliable forms of revenue as sales for the iPhone drop.

The App Store is a profitable business for Apple, which usually takes 30 per cent of everything that is sold in the store. Under the new subscription model, that will drop to 15 per cent after a year.