Depends on the game really. If you have a game that people can buy on impulse and is pretty enough, then make it $1 and see how high you can go. You can always increase the price any time. Assume that your sale price difference from the real price is your marketing expenses. We tried the other approach, even though we didn't mean to. We actually thought we were doing a sale. You can't blame us though. When you have worked on something for so long and poured your heart into it, it is very hard to convince yourself that you need to sell it for $1. Very very tough the first time. I guess it gets easier as you make more apps. Personally I would try the approach that worked for iDracula Although getting featured by Apple (Blocked) or a kick ass Lite version (iShoot) does work too. Good luck.
I love Orions and iDracula. I hear you are making a Tower Defense game though Don't make me love that too. Screenshot looks awesome. The red theme looks sick. Kudos to your artist(s).
That #1 spot (all apps) includes sales from all countries. Position 56 in Top Apps list (38 for games) for US is about 700 units a day. Total of all other countries usually (depends on title) is a factor of 3x, thus one would expect 2100 total sales (all countries) for an app at #56. A pretty big fall off from #1 to #56, BUT, still a bit of sales to be had. At $.99 for the app that works out to about $44,000 a month. One should be able to get by on that.
I have been thinking hard about this now, and after reading all the comments on this thread (sorry to take the topic away from the actual iDracula app itself- congrats to those guys!), I have decided to do the same thing- release the game at the nice cheap price of 59p/$.99. After all, I haven't got a big brand name to rely on for reputation, and there are plenty of excellent games out there at this cheap price, so charging more than those for mine (not saying mine isn't going to be as excellent ) doesn't sound logical. This leads me to thinking about the lite version I was going to do. I really don't see the point of a lite version if the full game is so cheap. Quite often I have just thought 'sod it' and spent the 59p. Look at iDracula as proof that a lite version for a 59p app is not needed. Lets face it, that time spent re-programming the app as a lite version (ie cutting out or down on the career etc) may be better spent on making the full game even more polished!
There's absolutely no reason to make a Lite version. The game already made its name on a 99 cent value and when it goes up to 2.99 it will have the previous buzz from 99c buyers, the reputation of being #1 in nearly all appstores worldwide in less than a week and new updates. And you know the guys that do the Appstore commercials are going wild over this and saying: holy shit, imagine when we show this, we won't need to quickly flip through 20 games, we could just show this one and a few other outstanding games. Lite versions are for those $5 and over games that need a little push to get over the initial hump. No, iDracula is pretty cool where it is. All that's left is dreaming of a premium Zelda like RPG story game, with devious bosses and long pathways... someday.
I haven't played the game yet either but it looks fantastic. Good for them. I am happy to see other small devs make it big. Of course the overall launch plan was effective, but I believe essentially this proves that great games DO rise to the top. It also does not mean it guarantees your game will react the same way. Sometimes the 99 cent price point or sale works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a lite version helps boost sales, sometimes it doesn't. Here at IUGO we're still on a learning curve, but we're optimistic that we too can have a hit game on the App Store, despite all the noise and poor discovery method for the user. I'm personally routing for all small devs who put out quality games to make it big. There's room for all of us, and it's our time to shine.
Yeah, this is a tricky part of the App Store. I've paid $.99 to buy an app outright based on just screenshots and a good description.. while other times I've been wanting a lite version even before spending $.99. As much as I would love to have some hard and fast rules about what definitely to do when releasing a game, it still seems like there is some feeling around in the dark to do. What might help is when you're developing a full version to keep a lite version in mind. Try to structure things in such a way that you can more easily scale things back for the lite version instead of having to really customize your code for a lite.
I'm not a developer, but from a consumer's point of view I like Team Phobic's (prior) method for Bounce On. By starting low, and increasing the price as they add more value to the game and providing free updates to the current owners, it really rewards the early buyers. As long as the game justifies each price point that it's at, I think that this is the best method (at least for the buyer). However, I guess this method may not have worked as they recently put the game on sale. Back on topic. As I posted in another thread, I bought iDracula the day it came out, but finally got around to playing it today and I really like the game a lot, so I am very happy for the game's success. The update looks like it's going to make the game that much better.
