If you look under 'racing/what's hot/see all' there is a list of 120 'hot' racing games which features Ground Effect Lite. This has to be the lightest weight 'feature' of all and has, predictably, had no discernible effect on download numbers.
Yeah, I think you're right. It is a great idea and step, but not quite enough to help the indie devs. Hoops Madness is in the top spot of What's Hot in Sports Games and in the second row in Arcade. Effects on sales has been pretty minimal. They seem to have some form of weighting on apps, since I tried an experiment and changed categories from Family to Arcade to see if it would make a difference. I think at the end of the day, what other people have said is right. Most people use the iPhone to view the store. So being featured on the iPhone, being in the top 25 list of any category, and being a new release all have bigger impacts (though the new Releases is a bit hit or miss, but you are more visible for a small window of time). Having QuitIt! listed on the actual "What's Hot" before ... I can tell you first hand that has a huge impact .
In the Music category, of the five apps on the front page of "New and Noteworthy," only one is in the top 100 (free or paid): "Justin Bieber Amazing Facts + Videos" at 90. I was a little disappointed when Aqua Chimes was in the "Spotlight" section, then got cut off when the section changed names and was limited to 20 apps. But I guess it makes no difference.
Heh, I was able to see Halp! go up yesterday in the Productivity category after we dropped the price to free, that was nice.
I wish Apple would moderate the categories at least a little bit. Why is a Ganster Wars clone (free btw) in the New And Noteworthy section of Racing? I know my own game isn't technically racing, but it was hard to decide where to put Dave. He's on a motorcycle at least, you go fast LOL. Even if they don't moderate the sections, why the hell is it in New n Noteworthy (racing)? I assume an actual human has to put it there. Stupid. Other interesting "racing games"....Mob Wars, Game Dock, Homerun Derby 3D. The Entertainment category seems to be a catch-all for all games. We are forced to pick a second category and there really is no other choice. Thinking about putting DD in Finance and see how that goes
There are a lot of far less 'racing' games in that chart. I think a few developers have realised that it's good for visibility. When Ground Effect Lite was released in March it stayed on the new releases page of racing for 8 days compared to 24 hours or so on the Arcade page. Ground Effect is also in the top 100 racing games in 70 stores which, between them, add up to maybe 3 sales per day. Strangely GE gets far more sales from the UK and US where it's out of the 100. There are some weird things going on in the smaller stores. In Lithuania for example Ground Effect is 7 in Paid Racing, 24 in arcade and 71 in All games. The total number of paid sales in Lithuania is, as far as I can tell, none! Presumably the 93 downloads it had during the FAAD promo are enough to elevate it above the rest of the zero selling competition
