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App Farm says simultaneously paid and Lite launches are the only way

Maximise your launch impact

App Farm says simultaneously paid and Lite launches are the only way
The rules of how to release games on the App Store are slowly becoming more solid.

A great example of how this information is coalescing into canon is provided by The App Farm.

Its blog talks in detail about the impact of releasing a Lite version of its game iCombat in terms of conversion to paid sales.

It initially delayed the launch of the Lite version “fear of cannibalizing our potential user base and concern for giving away our iCombat’s secret sauce in the demo version”.

However the Lite version was so good at driving paid sales, the developer says it plans simultaneous paid and Lite releases in future.

In detail, the iCombat conversion rate was 8.7 percent in the US and 6.5 percent in globally.

“Even when iCombat was clearing over 2.5k lite downloads a day our conversion rate was peaking at above 9%,” it points out.

Its five takeways from the experience are:

1. Should have released lite version from the beginning

2. Lite does NOT cannibalize sales

3. Get the bugs out for your lite release

4. Lite sales trail off too but paid sales remain higher

5. Frequent releases do juice downloads

Head over The App Farm blog to get the full details.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.