Hi, what are your guys experience in releasing a lite version of your game? How much boost in sales did you get on average?
I'm not a developer. But if you make a lite version, do not put too much in so that people will be satisfied with a lite.
When we released the lite version of Jet Car Stunts the game was boosted up the charts as high as 73 in the game charts (US). Before that we were around the 200 mark. But at the same time we were Openfeint Gold which also helped. But in our case the lite version helped.
Ravensword lite probably pulled us up about 10 slots in the RPG category, (from 30 to 20) but having the 2.99 sale brought us up to #5 RPG from #30.
We did Lite versions of Phaze, Platypus, and Funkyball Worlds, and haven't seen any measurable effect from them. Doing a Freeappaday giveaway on Funkyball Worlds has had a better long term effect than the Lite version.
Haven't seen any benefits from lite versions at all, and won't be wasting any more time doing them. Considering pulling the ones I have done from the Apppstore too ...
Good thanks Joe. Actually, just to correct, we did Astraware Casino with Freeappaday. It's still selling well 3 months later.
This is a very interesting discussion & made me mentally re-wind to several months ago when the accepted thinking was that lite/free versions were the best way to go. Back then, the rationale (the way I remember it) was that releasing a free version was confirmed as an effective way of getting the game out there & allowing users to assess it (on a limited basis) & then decide, based on it's sheer awesomeness, to pay for the full version. It was, pretty much, the only way to get some attention, in the absence of a significant Apple feature or serious levels of excitement on the major forums. It seems to me that things have now changed for certain titles. If your game's download numbers are already large ie; more than about 500k (whether through actual sales or free promotions through the likes of FAAD) then this must, surely, impact on the effectiveness of also having a free version available, the primary goal of maximising public awareness having already been achieved. I maybe alone in drawing these conclusions but, anecdotal evidence (from spying on the performance of other titles, which I'll refrain from naming) suggests to me that having a free version in such circumstances may actually negatively influence paid sales. Common sense? Thousands of satsified customers are raving about your game and tell their friends they should download it. A free version is available - what do you think that the majority of these friends will decide to do? In the long-term, having trailer loads of cusomers getting to sample your game for notning may be a great outcome, as eventually a significant proportion of those downloading the lite may go on to buy the full version. But, I've almost never done that myself - maybe because I'm an ultra-casual gamer and seldom play anything for more than 10 minutes. With titles that have already caused a major stir such as Jet Car Stunts & Ravensword, it must be pretty hard to figure out whether any upwards sales blip was really attributable to releasing a free version or from the resultant publicity that must have ensued which would, in turn, have impacted on public awareness of the titles. I think that, If your aim as a developer is just to continue to have your game downloaded (maybe so that you can up-sell later, take advantage of in-app purchases, build numbers for OF-type leaderboards or mabye just on account of your megalomaniac tendancies) then it probably doesn't really matter as much about sales as numbers. If, on the other hand, you're a developer because your primary, short to medium-term goal is to make some money, then having a free version might not be the best way to go. It's a risky business and we're all learning but I think that, if I were the decision-maker, I would have pulled the free version of Ground Effect as soon as we had more than 500,000 downloads, thus obliging anyone who was interested to pay for the full version (which is a bargain anyway, in my humble opinion). Apologies for the ultra-long post; I'd love to hear what others think .
The problem with most of these ideas is that it works for the first few who use it. Then once the success story gets out, everyone is going to try it. Then the noise level increases and your app gets drowned out again.
Well, we just recently pulled our lite from the store after going on sale for $0.99 and I actually think we got a boost from doing that. Its hard to tell whats cause or effect (we removed the lite 4 days after going on sale), but our $0.99 sale's momentum has still not died down since last thursday, which is very surprising to me -- looking at the trends of most other games it seems price drops for games in the middle of the app store typically equate to a few day spike, and then a dip back down. Ever since we took that lite down we've been holding steady at around the 200-250 spot in the US. Heck, we were at about the #16 spot in Japan, and after we removed the lite we catapulted up to the #4 spot. Again, its hard to tell whether this was just the chart position/sale momentum or what, but we will not be releasing a lite in the future until well after our next games release. In hindsight I really think the lite hurt us a bit initially as well as when we were featured by Apple.
Well, fwiw, when I get lite versions, if I find that I use it a lot, I try to buy it. I guess that it depends on how much it is going to cost - even with a lite version, it's unlikely that I will spend $10 on an app. I wonder how the response is for the apps that tease that the price will be going up soon?
@Pamx What we noticed with Jet Car Stunts was that when the lite version had a large sales spike, the payed version would spike as well. But there again we were Openfeint Gold at the same time so that has to factor in somehow but in our case the lite did help. Also, we decided to release the lite version with complete new levels because people who had payed for the game were asking for new tracks, and we thought it would be a good way to boost the lite up the charts and to give some free content out to existing players - get people who bought the game to download the lite. What's interesting about the payed and lite versions is that the highest chart positions for both are exactly the same for the US... I cannot explain why this happened - I guess it is the pure randomness of the App Store. I think the best plan of attack for a game is release the game, keep updating it with new features, release the lite version soon after... If that goes well for the game then stick with it for a while. As soon as things start dropping badly with sales do a sale or one of those free for a day things. If the game gets a large user base think about expanding it with DLC.
I don't know what to say, the public opinion changes so rapidly around here. We released a full version about 3 weeks ago ad, for a tiny dev, it was selling faily well. Not as well as I wanted, but you know. Our lite came out a few days ago, and it is obviously still too early to tell the effect it's had - I am just happy that we got a fairly good number of lite downloads, because more than making $$ right now I really just want to get my name out there and have people talk about my product. This seems to be the hardest thing to do, in this beyond-overcrowded scenario we are now in. The bits and pieces of feedback I get for my game are wonderful, I couldn't be happier - everyone who actually tries it for longer than 8 seconds gets totally addicted and can't put it down for, like, hours (or so they say!) - but it's still too early to see if the lite will help sustain/grow that.. but my overall feeling is that even now, if you are a no-name releasing a lite, it's still very difficult to get the masses to notice/care unless you have some fancy tricks up your sleeve.
That is pretty much our thoughts right now... we're not going to use the lite as an actual selling tool, but almost treating it like a separate entity to get more exposure and overall downloads. We definitely plan on putting our light back out on the market once our sales dip back down from the current $0.99 sale.
Just want to bring up our recent experience with the lite version of N.Y.Zombies... When we dropped to $0.99 we started really doing well in Japan, getting as high as the mid teens in the "all games" category, while the lite version continued to grow as well. The next day we dipped back down a bit in the paid rankings and thought we would try an experiment since the lite kept growing and didn't seem to correlate with an increase in paid rank. We decided to remove the lite from sale, and subsequently shot up to #4 overall the next day. Now, could be a coincidence, but I happen to think at $0.99, by removing the lite we got a lot of those impulse and casual buyers who would've otherwise picked up the free lite version and probably been content with the few levels they played there. Like I said, something to consider especially if your app is $0.99.... the lite really might be taking away casual and impulse buys which are frequent at that low of a price anyway.
