Martin C. published the sales of his MicroCars iPhone game on the BOS forum.

As you will remember for my previous post, MicroCars nice, well written and complex game was close to the sales of iLightning small gadget 2 weeks after launch.

Well, one month and 10 days after its launch, MicroCars has sold 1035 units, more than iLightning performance in 6 months.

What happened?. Simple. Martin launched a “Lite” version of the game, and that free version got damned popular in the store… As I’m writing MicroCars lite is in the 16th place in the category Games->Racing (top free).

Let’s see a simple graph of Martin’s sales. Can you guess when the Lite version was launched?

As you might have guessed, the Lite version was launched near August 5th. The effect is impressive. Before that sales were averaging 12 a day and looking at the graph we can see a downward trend. After the launch of the Lite version, daily sales average jump to 43 a day and, at least to the naked eye, the trend is going upwards.

We are talking of an exceptionally well written game here. The App Store holds near 65.000 apps, most of which must be games. For a game to make the first places on one category, it has to be good.

Anyway, we have a clear morale here. For an iPhone app, the Lite version is a must.

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I’m just starting in the shrink wrap software world, so I read a lot of forums and blogs, specially BOS forum.  I learn a lot of things, and have a great time

One thing that amazes me is the  rigid position of the guys there regarding the price. They all stick to the “price signals quality” way of thinking and seldom consider other points of view.

Many of them are also afraid of special sales, they think that after you make a sale it’s difficult to return your price to the previous tag.

On a recent article on Coding Horror,  Jeff Atwood presented the case of Valve, a game producer. They tested the reaction to their holiday sales, with impressive results:

The massive Steam holiday sale was also a big win for Valve and its partners. The following holiday sales data was released, showing the sales breakdown organized by price reduction:

75% sale = 1470% increase in sales

10% sale = 35% increase in sales (real dollars, not units shipped)

25% sale = 245% increase in sales

50% sale = 320% increase in sales

Not all the markets are the same, not all the products are the same. Sales must be carefully designed, planned and communicated to avoid affecting product image. But we must remember that, with all that taken into account, price is a powerful lever to play with!

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