We were featured some month ago with POC but never got a feedback, you will see it in the sales increasing suddenly.
They will only contact you if they need additional graphics, for example you're getting put into the main banner at the top of the app store. With that one exception, nobody I have ever heard of was called. Apple didn't call me either, but I found out from friends e-mailing me when I was featured
seems to be different, in germany we had "What we're Playing." for poc but no email, so maybe it depends on who decides on this.
Agreed it's pretty arbitrary, and people shouldn't assume they'll be contacted. For a while, Apple wasn't even sending email notifications when app updates were approved.
Str8ts 6 x 6 just showed up on What" We're Playing" No email or correspondence from iTunes. When this happens it is important to polish the app descriptions and screen shots etc.as quickly as possible! We noticed the feature due to sales increases as well the next day.
Something like appfigures.com can help you spot if you've been featured in another country - they show the top 100 rankings for all countries, so you'll notice within an hour or two if you get a big bump (before your sales reports are in.)
We use MajicRank for the same thing and noticed a big bump today, Invisible Links was put on the front app store page of New and Noteworthy. Previously it was on the app store/games N&N section. The effect seems substantially better than being on the games subcategory but won't have sales numbers until tomorrow.
Johann, Congrats on your great app. Your group went out on a limb with invisible links. I love it when creativity gets rewarded! Apple had no choice but to feature your app! Enjoy your moment in the sunshine!
Our game, Storm Attack, was featured under "Hot New Games" (just got bumped off )and the games section of "New and Noteworthy" (still there!) shortly after release. Luckily my programmer caught it, as we didn't receive notification from Apple. The sales did jump substantially the next day, as others have mentioned, so we probably would have figured it out.
I woke up this morning and noticed a huge spike in sales. Turns out Bounce Pop 2 got featured in What's Hot! No email or an notification, so we just got lucky!
I got an email from the OpenFeint guys! My game Rummage, was/is featured in the "New and Noteworthy"... but I didn't know until I got an email from the OpenFeint guys congratulating me!? It'd be nice if apple gave the devs a hollar first. Good looking out OF!
Does anyone know if the featured sections are the same worldwide? Or at least grouped together, ie: do the Canadian and US App Stores feature the same games?
Definitely not the same, at least not all featured sections. Our game Hopido is currently featured on Staff Favorites in USA and Canada, various Far Eastern countries, and random others such as Russia and India, but not on any European stores I've checked. On the other hand the game has also been on "What We're Playing" section which seems to be the same worldwide. I'm pretty sure the promotions are grouped somehow, but not sure how.
Our game Crystal Alliance just got featured on "What we're playing." Taking a quick look, the game appears featured on the Canada and US store. I was surprised to see it there since we didn't receive a notification email from Apple.
Ground Effect has been in games/What's Hot for a few weeks now in most (all?) app stores. A few days ago we were here: US arcade: 33 US racing: 10 UK arcade: 20 UK racing: 8 36 hours ago we appeared on AppStore/N&N in the UK and a few other european stores while the What's Hot list scrolled right so it's only easily visible to people with very big screens. Now our positions are: US arcade:61 US racing:18 UK arcade:9 UK racing:5 above Need for Speed and Asphalt 5! UK games:34 UK apps:58 Maybe it's the fact that AppStore/N&N seems to be the same list as Featured/New on the phone and I'm finally reaping the benefits of squeezing under the 10mb limit. At least the UK is the second biggest market...
Congrats Glenn! Ravensword got featured yesterday, or two days ago. It went from #29 top grossing up to #14 this morning. We were notified by Chillingo when it got featured. Haven't received the sales stats yet though today, so I wonder how it did compared to yesterday (Our slowest sales day so far) It seems as if the rankings don't really mean a whole lot other than a general sense of how you are doing. For instance, our first day was by far the best, but our rankings were very low. We dropped off by about 30% the second day, but our rankings started to climb and then we made it to #13 top grossing app. I really don't trust the rankings. Update: Just got the sales report from yesterday - Sales doubled because of that feature (and maybe the IGN review had a little bit to do with it too)
