App Store Analysis: Licence injection boosts Top 10 average price by 29 percent

One of the most important App Store metrics for publishers and developers is the average price of the games making up the Top 100.

Over the past month, it's hovered around the $2.70 mark, with roughly half of the chart consisting of 99c games.

The good news this week is that the release of licenced titles such as Civilization Revolution, Guitar Rock Tour 2, The Game Of Life: Classic Edition and Wolfenstein RPG - all priced at $4.99 - has lifted the overall average.

It's now $2.86, although this remains down compared to the $3.20 level recorded at the start of July.

Yet, significantly, the biggest effect was seen in terms of the most popular games - the average price of the top 10 was up 29 percent.

The biggest winner this week is Firaxis and its publisher/owner 2K, as Civilization Revolution ($4.99) is at the #1 position, despite its crash and performance issues.

A new entry overcoming similar problems is Duke Nukem 3D ($2.99), which is at #21

The other big licence entrants were: Gameloft's Guitar Rock Tour 2 in at #36; EA Mobile's The Game Of Life: Classic Edition at #46; and id software's EA Mobile-published Wolfenstein RPG in at #48.

Significantly however, the latter's pricepoint ($4.99) is much lower than the $9.99 at which id games such as Doom Resurrection were previously launched.

Incidentally, Doom Resurrection was one of the chart's highest re-entries, now at #8, thanks to a price cut to $2.99 which coincided with id's Quakecon event (13 - 16 August).

Other new entries included 10 Pin Shuffle (Bowling) at #17, despite costing $3.99, while Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor ($2.99) was at #61.

There was plenty of activity this week when it came to games moving up the chart.

Moto X Mayhem (99c) jumped from #19 to #3, while Paper Toss: World Tour (99c) jumped from #21 to #6.

The news EA Mobile is holding the iPhone release of Madden NFL 10 back to September, saw rival Gameloft cut the price of its NFL 2010 from $7.99 to $4.99, with the effect it leaped 23 places to #18.

On the back of the US PGA Championship, EA tweaked the price of Tiger Woods PGA Tour - dropped from $6.99 to $4.99 - which saw the game jump 21 places to #40.

Conversely, the effect of price rises saw PopCap Games' Bookworm drop 28 places to #32 and Ludia's The Price Is Right drop 23 places to #28. The price of both games changed from 99c to $2.99, demonstrating the long term problems of making price increases to top 10 games.

Similarly, Capcom's Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition dropped from #37 to #83 due to a price increase from $4.99 to $7.99.

Games making re-entries on the back of updates included Parachute Panic (99c), The Creeps (99c), Crazy Choppers ($2.99), Synth Racing (99c), Sentinel 2: Earth Defense ($2.99), and Cro-Mag Rally (99c).

However the release of episode 4 of Harbor Master (99c) didn't seem to work as planned. The game dropped 50 places to #86.

Still, it's good to ngmoco's Star Defense peggling(tm) to #81. Its future position seems likely to be limited though as it still requires OS 3.0.

As previously noted, the average price of games in the US App Store Top 100 rose 6 percent from $2.70 to $2.86.

This increase was most noticeable in the top 10 and the top 20. The average price of the top 10 games rose 29 percent to $2.69, and was up 34 percent in terms of the top 20 compared to last week.

Currently there are three games priced at $4.99 in the top 10 - 2K's Civilization Revolution, EA's Scrabble and Gameloft's The Oregon Trail.

EA's Tetris and Gameloft's NFL 2010 - both $4.99 - are in the top 20.

As part of this shift, the number of 99c games in the Top 100 has dropped to 42, with the difference mainly transferred to the $2.99 and $4.99 pricepoints, each of which contains 21 games.

When it comes to the split between publishers on the App Store, little has changed compared to last week.

EA has increased its stake by one to 11 thanks to Wolfenstein RPG, while Chillingo has dropped one as Zombies vs. Sheep (99c) fell out the chart.

The average price of Gameloft's games has dropped due to the sale for NFL 2010.

And although not listed on this table - as we only include companies with three or more titles - it's also worth pointing out that developer Backflip Studios continues to have two games in the top 10: Ragdoll Blaster - A Physics Puzzler ($1.99) and Paper Toss: World Tour (99c).

On the back of this performance, in late July 2009, it raised $145,000 of investment.