In our reports we analyze pricing developments in the Apple App Store. To get an idea of the impact of application pricing, it is always interesting to look at specific examples of applications that test various pricing points. One of these applications is F.A.S.T. — Fleet Air Superiority Training!. This game by publisher SGN has been very popular since its launch on June 6. According to TechCrunch, SGN saw a revenue of $1 Million in only six weeks.

SGN has been testing different price-points since its app has launched. Initially, it was available for $9.99, after which the price was decreased to $5.99 and all the way to $1.99 today. To see the impact of these price changes, we made an overview of the daily price and rank in the Games-Action category:

Daily price and rank in Games-Action category

After launching at a price of $9.99, the app entered the top 100. But after being available for a week, the popularity declined and SGN decided to lower the price to $5.99. This had a significant influence on its ranking. Within one day, it went from rank 96 to 7. After a couple of days, the price was lowered again to $4.99, but without a major influence on ranking. Also the next decrease to $3.99 did not really impact popularity.

When the game’s rank began to lower in the beginning of July, another price decrease to $1.99 was applied. The same day the app returned in the top 10.

As shown in the above graph, SGN has been adjusting price levels to successfully influence its ranking. The question of course remains if the overall revenue earned was also maximized. In other words; does the higher rank and higher amount of downloads compensate the lower price in SGN’s total revenue?