Facebook had this same "Quit your job, get easy money by building stupid little apps like this one!" buzz about a year ago. I actually know some people who quit their very well-paying jobs to take a shot at it...and unfortunately it hasn't yet panned out that well... Maybe the App Store's ability to provide direct revenue to devs will make this platform more sustainable, but I think it's more likely that it will be a similar pattern to FB (where the apps launched in the first two weeks and a tiny percentage of very compelling later apps will do well, and the rest will get zero attention)
Better question - would Facebook apps improve to the point where they would be worth paying for if FB built out a payment platform? Would enough pro devs start building FB apps if they knew they might have a revenue stream besides the dreadful social networking CPMs?