Phil Hassey - game dev blog
Phil Hassey as Rambo
".. I've been there,
I know what it's like,
and I'll do it again if I have to."

Galcon pricing experiment

Two weeks ago, the price of Galcon @ $3, Labs @ $2, and Lite @ $0.  This past week, I changed them to Galcon @ $5, Labs @ $3, and Lite at $1.  I wanted to see how this would impact revenue.

And the big surprise is …

It didn’t!  Much.  Best I can calculate, revenue was down 10%.  The most dramatic change was Lite, which went from $0 revenue to a few bucks a day, and from a few hundred downloads to almost none.  So this week I’m changing the prices back to Galcon @ $3, Labs at $1, and Lite at $0.  What have we learned?  It seems that people who want a free game want a free game, and people who are willing to buy would rather spend less.  Since I’m not going to run this sale for a month I can’t say for sure what the long term effects will be, but I’d guess word-of-mouth would be reduced as the pool of Lite players shrunk.  Who knows 😉

Cheers!
-Phil

2 Responses to “Galcon pricing experiment”

  1. Jomskylark Says:

    Interesting experiment. Thanks for posting the results!

  2. Rob Says:

    I guess you can’t keep messing around with this (anyone who bought at $5 won’t be too happy right now even though it’s just 2 bucks) but I’d have thought a more useful experiment, given that Lite for free probably brings in a pipeline of customers, would be 0 / 3 / 5 ?