You'll soon be able to sell App Store subscriptions to your iOS games

Apple's big WWDC developer conference kicks off next week, and in a new pre-WWDC interview with The Verge Apple exec Phil Schiller lays out plans to revamp the way iOS developers do business on the App Store.

The most notable proposed change is that Apple will soon allow all developers to sell subscriptions to their apps, and will cut back its longstanding 70/30 revenue-share model to 85/15 on revenue from subscriptions that have lasted more than a year.

It's a significant incentive for mobile devs to sell their games on a subscription basis, and it suggests Apple has seen success with its extant slew of subscription-based apps, which include newspapers, magazines, and streaming services like Apple Music.

"The developers who do have access to the subscriptions have been very happy with them," said Schiller, noting that the upcoming change to revenue-sharing was done "because we recognize that developers do a lot of work to retain a customer over time in a subscription model, and we wanted to reward them for that."

But as The Verge points out, some subscription-based services (like Spotify) have publicly complained about Apple's 30 percent cut and encouraged would-be customers to sign up for their services outside of the App Store, thereby cutting Apple out of the loop.

When this revamp rolls out, Apple is also planning to offer a variety of tiered pricing options for app subscriptions and implement subscriber safeguards -- like requiring subscribers to opt in when a developer raises the price of their subscription, or else have their subscription automatically terminated.

For further details on Apple's plans for the App Store this year, including the addition of search ads (which you'll presumably be able to buy for your own marketing purposes) and some promises to speed up app submission review times, check out the full interview with Schiller over on The Verge.