Chair Entertainment's Infinity Blade II was recently given away during the App Store's fifth birthday celebration, and the promo has turned into a boom business for Chair.
Based on the 5.7 million downloads that Infinity Blade II saw during the week-long promotion, Chair could have pocketed $27 million in sales after Apple's cut.
Instead, the firm gave a $6.99 game away for free.
Revenue winner
But it turns out that the exposure at being featured had a noticeable uptick in the weekly revenue generated by the game.
Setting aside the ancillary revenue generated by downloads of the original Infinity Blade and the Infinity Blade: Awakening e-book, Distimo reports that Infinity Blade II's weekly revenue was still more than double the figure generated in the week before the promotion.
"Despite the free offer, this game generated 2.4 times as much revenue as in the week before the free promotion," detailed Distimo.
"This case shows that offering an application for free and passing on the one-off revenue from direct purchases can still have a positive effect on the overall revenue due to in-app purchases, supporting also results of our previous research."
Curiously, Chair Entertainment's publicist Laura Mustard downplayed the uptick in in-app purchase expenditures for Infinity Blade II following the promotion.
"While we normally notice an increase at times when we've done free promotions, we don't think it's significant, because the game is balanced in a way that does not require any IAP," concluded Mustard.
[source: Distimo]
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