GRID Autosport, the AAA racing game which offers a console-quality racing experience on iOS, has passed more than 100,000 downloads since first debuting on the platform back in November last year.

Not only is that an impressive figure in its own right, it’s also a welcome piece of news for anyone who’d like to see fewer of the freemium, in-app purchase-loaded titles which have clogged up the App Store in recent years. Here’s why.

A port of the 2014 console racing game of the same name, GRID Autosport is far from the first big-name console game to arrive on iOS. However, unlike so many of those titles, it didn’t compromise the experience — or fundamentally change the gameplay — by overloading it with in-app purchases.

By the standard of some freemium titles which rack up millions of downloads, GRID Autosport‘s 100,000 downloads may sound relatively paltry. But it’s also a title which costs $9.99, thereby showing that there is a market for pricier titles which stick to the traditional way of pricing titles, rather than giving them away for “free” and then charging for extras like additional cars.

In the case of GRID Autosport, it boasts 100 different real life cars, including ones made by Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Bugatti, Chevrolet, Ford, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, and Subaru. All of these are available to the player once they’ve paid their ten bucks — with no more demands for money on top of this.

Hopefully this example may show a few more developers that they don’t need to necessarily choose between cash and quality when selecting how to port their game to iOS. Still, when you hear about Fortnite generating an eye-watering $1 billion from in-app purchases alone, we’re not expecting that pay model to vanish any time soon!

You can download GRID Autosport from the App Store here.

Via: Touch Arcade