As far as data to back up the concept that lower prices (specifically free or 99 cents) bring lower star-ratings, I can speak from experience. Rogue Touch had a 4.5 star rating for the longest time... most of the written iTunes reviews still are 4 and 5 stars in almost any country you check in. Now I'm at 3 stars average. Why? It's gotten even better with every update, so that is not it... What happened: I was featured by Apple and had a 99 cent sale. Sales went *way* up during that time, but a lot of people impulse-bought just because it was the #1 RPG in the app store by the 3rd day on sale. When these impulse shoppers decided the retro gameplay wasn't to their liking, it caused a lot of 1-star rate on deletes that dragged down my average score.
Yeah, same thing here. By far most of my written reviews are 4 and 5 stars, and I had a 4.5 star average for the first couple weeks, but then Apple featured me and the average went down a star. Not that I'm complaining. It might be nice if there was an option to see ratings derived only from reviews, though. Then it would go back up to 4.5 stars. Personally I don't find the non-review ratings of games to be of any use whatsoever. --Eric
Has anyone looked at whether ratings affect sales? The converse argument has been made, but ultimately, I would think sales is the endpoint that most would be interested in. A stellar rating is obviously good for pride, ego, brand and so forth, but do you sell less per day/week/month if your rating drops from 5 to 4 stars? 4 to 3? I would think the lower your rating to begin with, the more of an effect, though if your initial rating is below 3, I would suspect your sales are already going to be low. No data to back it up. Just my guess.
I think Don's got it spot on. No offense CommanderData but there's no surprise Rogue Touch isn't to everybody's liking. (I rather enjoy it myself, but I'm an old-hand). So, with a higher price-point people are likely to think twice before shelling out the cash, meaning that they're quite likely to have a special interest in the game/ kind of game they're buying. On the other hand if you pay less than a buck you won't think twice, especially if it's featured by Apple and someone else is raving about it.
Of our 11 apps, our most popular app is ColorTilt. Each week it is one of our top sellers whether we update it or not. We doubled the price and sales were affected not at all. Many people give it 4 and 5 stars and it has many great written reviews, but also many poor written reviews. By far, it has the highest number of 1 star reviews and probably the lowest overall average of all of our apps. I think one of the reasons it is one of our best sellers is that it attracts a lot of impulse purchases because people see what pretty pictures others have drawn and think "Oh, that's cool! I want to draw like that". Then, after they download it, they find their expectations unmet and promptly delete it with a bad rating. I sometimes think I see a lull in sales whenever a group of bad reviews hit or a bump whenever a some good reviews hit, but this is nothing I have scientifically studied. It's probably just me being supersensitive to the reviews. Personally, when before I purchase an app, I do check out the reviews to get a feel for what people think.
You can quickly scan the star ratings of the Top 100 on these lists http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/paid http://appshopper.com/bestsellers/free
Yes, the stars affect sales. Sparta was released and made it to the Top 11 Spot in the U.S. paid apps overall with a 4 star rating. It maintained that position with 3 1/2 stars. However, the app received some 1 star ratings, which brought it down to 2 1/2 stars. Once there, Sparta lost 12 positions in 3 days. The stars raised to 3 overall, which allowed the game to move ahead 1 spot and maintain that position. Hope that helps!
This is exactly what I was saying in the Free Sky Burger thread (which seems to have disappeared?). I just mentioned that this is a terrible strategy and got flamed. I will never buy another Nimblebit game for the same reason that GatorDeb said. They are seriously digging themselves a grave...
The thing is, I don't think you and GatorDeb are considering exposure. How many people know about price drops? Before AppSniper, I barely ever looked for "deals" on apps. I just checked out some of the lists that Apple had, and if a game looked interesting, and had enough reviews, I'd buy it. Then I discovered the forums, and I was able to fine tune my purchases even better. I'm willing to bet that the majority of iPhone and iPod touch users don't read forums or even use AppSniper before making a purchase. What I'm not sure about though is how a game's position on the charts change when an app's status is changed from paid to free and vice versa.
I agree that the star average should be from review only. Stick Escape's review would probably average up to be a 4 MAYBE 4.5, but it has a 3 star average rating because of those impulse purchases.
pharmx is right, one of the biggest problems on the App Store is just getting people to realize you EXIST! After today's promotion many thousands of people will have heard of NimbleBit and played at least one of our games, people who didn't know we existed yesterday. I'm sorry to rustle any fan's feathers in our efforts to become more well known. I still hope they find a way to enjoy every one of our future games, whether they pay for them or not!
It's definitely true that Rogue Touch is not everyone's cup of tea. No offense taken I agree with your analysis of what happened and it's kind of my point too- People who wouldn't have looked twice at my game decided "hey, what the hell, it's 99 cents and the #1 RPG"... Then they are disappointed because it's a brutally unforgiving old-school dungeon crawler and delete, leaving me a nice 1 star present. So many people are willing to buy *anything* for 99 cents, and if they don't like it, oh well, move on. If you're even 2 or 3 dollars it's not an impulse buy anymore (at least not by app store standards), and people are more careful and act with due diligence. It was fun to get the attention at the time, but I doubt I'll ever do 99 cents again. I do have to say my sales are lower now than prior to the 99 cent sale, and my star rating is 1.5 points lower... Coincidence? Maybe, but we'll see after my next update how things settle out!
And this is economics at its best/worst. Which approach is better eeenmachine's or CommanderData's? True, the games are from different genres, so the target population might be different...but I'd love to see which approach is superior. So many variables to consider: short term vs. long term sales, exposure, brand recognition, etc. It's great to see that indie devs can try different approaches and still be successful, instead of following the formulas of the big companies.
As I mentioned in this forum post, with the new iTunes App Store popularity meter algorithm, the only incentive now to releasing a free game is to spread the word, with the hope that purchasers give you great feedback and tell their friends. In the past, you also got a nice bump in popularity, but this is no longer true. You can still get a nice bump by selling your $4.99 game at $0.99, though - at least until Apple incorporates pricing into their popularity algorithm.
I have to wonder if they should incorporate pricing into their chart positions. That's quite an unusual thing for any sales chart. If you walked into an electronics store, one person might have purchased a $10,000 HDTV, that immediately gets the #1 position, but there's also this popular little $100 HDTV, selling 750 units, but it can't match the chart position of the more expensive TV sets, despite it possibly being an overall better TV. I'm definitely in agreement that the impulse purchases do skew the top 100, and that's something needing fixed, but incorporating gross revenue into the charts would just skew it in a different direction. I think the better solution would either be a separate chart for $0.99 apps. But ultimately, I expect this trend of impulse purchasing is going to be phased out. I think the market is already beginning to stabilize, part in thanks to those publishers who refuse to lower prices.
I currently have a dilemma whereby the project I want to do isn't viable unless it is a surefire hit. If apps were $5 it would make money if it just did 'well'. In the past (I've been writing little apps for mobiles for 10 years) you could make a good income after expenses if your app was just reasonably popular. Now I see that you have to sell bucketloads and be high up the chart. Maybe Apple could set the minimum price at $2 at some point. Many more apps would become viable at that price point. However I'm not sure consumers would agree.
EA, Gameloft, and Illusion Labs are the ones which spring to mind A couple of them have lowered prices slightly over time, but for the most part they are pricing between $2.99 - $9.99.
