No, just incredibly annoying. "Oh sweet, a free game!" "Actually looks surprisingly good, could have 5-star quality on our hands here..." "Says it's only free for 24 hours, better get it now." "Oh wait, it's (essentially) just a lite version pretending to be a good deal to get noticed."
I see this becoming more of a standard and personally, this is something I can't stand. Given that many games are $1 or free, it's easy to rack up multiple pages worth of games, and the last thing I need is a game that takes up two spots. Maybe I'm just an outlier, but I know I'm not the only one. If you look at the reviews for Cut the Rope: Holiday edition, there are a number of people asking that the levels be added to the regular game. Many games are already not worth one slot (the ones I delete or never download in the first place), and I consider almost none to be worth two slots. This is just my $0.02 from a player's point of view.
lol .. like i said.. no matter what and how you do there is always someone who dislikes the idea.. now its about "slots".. i find it funny how about - delete apps you don't need - put apps into folders - stop sobbing about something you got for free - stop downloading free apps and stick to $5+ apps that will get you more space on your ios device
We Just released a Legendary Wars FREE version that we worked a week on creating 7 custom levels and it seems to be gaining traction. If you spend a little time on it by making it fun, than I think its worth it. It's an excellent form of advertising. If you haven't checked out Legendary Wars, its 99 cents now, or check out the free version. We got called the "top new iphone game of 2011" by Kotaku. cheers
I saw this! I also saw the full version update this morning. It mentions a special "surprise" for your faithful users (I, of course, am a faithful user!). Is the surprise the rest of the mentioned updates, or is it something altogether different? : )
hey thanks! It's a bit off topic but it should tell you in top line of what's new when you first open the app after you update. I'm gonna look for your name on the leaderboards
I was just thinking about this as I have "Cut the Rope Holiday" next to the full game. I think the only reason they don't add the holiday addition to the full game is because one it's not that holiday anymore and would seem a bit out of place and two, its basically a Christmas theme and really a religious tie in which really feels out of place in a game for everyone... I look at it more like the Star Wars Christmas special than a real addition to their brand...
Lite version We have had some good luck with our lite version, It's a limited version of our full one with no ads. (but the ad part will change soon). Bascially our Lite version (free) upsells our paid game (.99) We get a good conversion ratio of 10 to 1. That's not usual though- i think we have an advantage because the girls animate and try to convince the player to make a purchase at the end. - Which is more engaging than just a splash screen detailing what they get with the paid. WET Productions Twitter My Virtual Girlfriend My Virtual Girlfrie Lite
As you can see ... big studios / decreasing their sales around 300% A BIG SATURATED MARKET -> Time Square is a terrific corner to set a Hot Dog Business... BUT if you have 200 Hot Dogs guys in the same corner... you won't see any nice profit Best formula: Make a GOOD product OVER all, and PAID version... Ads incomes are for high-school students!
1. You have a very low mortgage 2. You are 1 in 300 000 80% of developer who chose ad revenue strategy gets less than 2$/day
I have several Lite/free versions that accumulate small amounts each day, which add up to a reasonable sum at the end of the month. By reasonable sum, I mean thousands of dollars. Ads work, if you create enough eyes to see them.
After much debate about how I want to handle the free/lite versions going forward I think I'm going the route of 'prequel.' Basically a free version with some changes, sample levels that can be enjoyed by people who even got the paid version. Also, no ads. The only ad in the game will be a button to 'up sell' to the full version. After I get all of that setup and going (may/june), I'll post back in this thread how it went.
I have not heard many success stories of lite versions without ads increasing sales. I like ads as some extra income, and more importantly extra incentive to buy the full version. A lite version also gets you a second chance on the new releases list. My experience: We released a lite version several months after the paid version. It got 200k downloads with no ads, and didn't really increase our sales at first. This got us into new and noteworthy, which did sell a lot of copies of the paid version. Then we added ads and it became a pretty good source of extra income. For what it's worth, here's my breakdown:
Doing the same for Blood Fever at the moment. If this together with the marketing push does not help to increase sales, we probably will go free for the full version with adds.
Due to all those freemium games, the free charts are harder to climb than ever before. I think a lite version only makes sense if you've got enough buzz around your app. In my opinion, however, if you get your free version on top of the charts it'll definitely affect sales - as long as you clearly point out the benefits of paying the full price. I'd not release a paid game and a lite game that can become a "full" one by IAP, because it'll split your sales on two versions so your visibility gets smaller. just my thoughts. regards momo
