Top 100 Grossing Apps

Interesting.

 

Gotta love AppShopper...so useful for analyzing data and emerging trends. I wish I could remember more from the statistics class I took back in college, lol.

The million dollar question still remains...at what exposure level do you obtain maximum results, and at what price point can you achieve that exposure level.

 

Now that Apple is actively giving extra visibility to top grossing apps this will create a feedback loop that will drive prices upwards.

It's hard to read much into the list right now that would help indie developers determine pricing. While it may be surprising to some that only 15 of the top grossing apps are 99 cents, if you filter out non-games and branded IP (i.e. Uno, Tetris, PacMan, Scrabble), it appears that few indie games that made the list are over 99 cents.

 

You make a very valid point...but what conclusions can we draw from that? Is it because most indie devs (the ones that have made it onto the top 100 list) are not pricing above 99 cents? Or is it because the feedback loop isn't strong enough to sustain non branded IP?

 

It's weird to see so many "iMafia" type apps listed.

Many of the higher-than-99cent games are either games from established publishers (GameLoft), well-known games using licensed brands (i.e. Monopoly), or games that were already hugely popular online before being introduced to the App Store (Sally's Spa).

The game "Conquest (Risk style game)" is clearly not an officially licensed title (and admits as such in the description), but is a premium priced clone that would be easily found by someone searching for that popular game. It's probably only a matter of time before Hasbro sues them.

With these sorts of things filtered out is where things get really interesting for indie developers hoping to glean tactics.

99 cents is a well represented tier in the top-grossing list, particularly when focusing on top-grossing titles from smaller, indie developers.

There are a number of top-grossing evergreen games (Crosswords, Solitaire) that are reaping the benefits of being first to market and associated inertia from top-lists.

Meteor Blitz is interesting - it's a slickly produced game, that got a big promotional push from Apple.

 

whats interesting is that the number 1 paid game (now) is a 0.99 app and for grossing it was number 11, while grossing number 10 is as paid game number 32 so:

Assume 10.000 sales for number 1 = 10.000 * 0.99 = 9900 ( 11 crossing )
number 32 paid games is 10 crossing so is must be >9900 assume 10.000 /6.99 = 1430 sales

Seems like even paid top 100 ( games ) is really about being in the top 50 then?