Air Hockey Free was released 12 days ago and it’s daily downloads continue to grow. Over 30,000 people have now downloaded Air Hockey Free. Over the weekend, downloads per day roughly doubled and the App Store ranking in free games went from approximately #110 to #99 last night to #91 this morning.
Not to get too excited yet, those numbers are just for games & that still places Air Hockey Free well outside the top 100 apps in the App Store. Today, the #46 game is the last free game in the top 100 overall.
We expect downloads take the normal Monday hit, but hopefully being in the top 100 games will combat that a little. Stay tuned for more of the Air Hockey Free story! Get it at the App Store link below.
Air Hockey Free was released a few days ago and already over 7,000 people have downloaded it. It appeared in the US iPhone App Store late on Feb 4th (Wednesday). We posted a link to the App Store on twitter which spawned an iTunes review from KRAPPS.com and a retweet mini review, “Love the realistic motion!” On the 5th, it was available worldwide. Downloads were roughly the same on the 5th & 6th, and jumped by almost 1000 on the 7th (Saturday).
After some serious App Store Top Free chart digging in just about every category, our best guesstimate showed Air Hockey Free to be in the number 300 spot out of all free applications by mid-day on the 6th. Now early morning on the 8th, Air Hockey Free is the number 40 spot in free Arcade games and the number 4 spot in free Kids games. Our Acceleroto Center for Supercomputing now estimates that based on the last 24 hour’s sales, Air Hockey Free is teetering just outside the top 100 free games in the App Store & isn’t too far from the top 100 of all free apps.
Date & Downloads
2/4/09 – 81
2/5/09 – 1894
2/6/09 – 1798
2/7/09 – 2658
Alright, so here’s the deal. Apple does not allow “demos” in their App Store. They do, however, allow “free” and “lite” apps. Users beg for demos. Air Hockey Free is not (officially) a demo. Do the math though. Much like many other free apps out there, Air Hockey Free is designed to show you just enough of the game so that you’ll figure out if you like it or not. If you like it and you want more options and harder difficulty settings, it’s time to think about upgrading. We’ve made it easy for you. Right there on the setup screen (double tap on the Acceleroto logo when you’re playing a game), there’s a button that takes you directly to the Air Hockey page on your iPhone or touch.
Air Hockey is just $0.99 and offers 4 more difficulty settings & more table color options. You haven’t beaten Air Hockey until you’ve won playing 2-puck INSANE!
It’s too early to tell a trend of conversions from Air Hockey Free to Air Hockey, but so far it looks like there’s about a 1% conversion rate. We’ll continue to post download numbers for Air Hockey & Air Hockey Free. Look for it soon in the top 100!
Download Air Hockey Free and spread the word!
Air Hockey started life as a very simple game with only 2-player gameplay. Since then, Air Hockey has grown to include a great feature set and was a fixture in the App Store Top 10. Over 200,000 people have tested their reflexes in Air Hockey. So that everyone can be exposed to the super-fun gameplay, we’ve decided to release a demo version. Air Hockey Free will be available soon through the App Store. The demo will include 1 and 2-player modes with Kiddie and Easy difficulty settings. The table color is fixed and the colors are changed from the full version of the game.
Take a look at Air Hockey Free! If you like it, please buy Air Hockey.
At Macworld Expo, bestappever.com announced the winners of their 2008 competition. Air Hockey was nominated in the Best Arcade Game and Best Kids Game categories. There was some great competition in both categories. Air Hockey won the Best Arcade Game award!
Thanks to all of Air Hockey’s fans for voting!
Air Hockey has been in the App Store for about 5 months now. In the life of a video game, that’s forever. Watching sales on a daily basis has been an interesting past time. I threw together a weekly sales stats chart to show the big picture of what’s happened over the last 5 months.
As of December 28th, Air Hockey has sold 203,485 copies. Air Hockey’s been priced at $0.99 since its release. Do the math. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from the rest of the data. I’ll summarize what I’ve learned: holidays are nice, free competitors aren’t all that great, free competitors aren’t all that bad, and listen to your customers.
After the launch of our next (still secret) game, I look forward to hearing from those who buy it. Like I currently do with Air Hockey, I’ll pass along a few free promo codes for the new game on twitter. To get in on that action, follow us on twitter.
Happy New Year!
p.s. If you don’t own Air Hockey, buy it! It’s still just $0.99!
About a month ago I joined Steve Bostedor and Dave Buchanan as a guest on their podcast The App Show. We talked about the development process, dealing with the App Store from the developer’s side, and sales. This was the first time I’d publicly spoken about my sales. Since then, the sales numbers have continued to climb. Air Hockey sales are now over 180,000.
Here’s a little history. Air Hockey was originally envisioned as a simple 2-player only game, but has grown quite a bit since its initial launch on July 29th. We listened to users’ requests and released an update including a new one player mode on August 23rd. Our one player mode AI is arguably the most advanced of an air hockey-type game in the App Store. Since then, we expanded our original 3 difficulty settings to include Expert and INSANE! modes. Within 2 weeks of the 1-player update, Air Hockey became the #1 ranked game for sale in the App Store. On November 11th, we added the option to play with one or two pucks. Our Air Hockey is the only game of its kind in the App Store with this capability. A couple weeks ago, we added OpenAL sound support which renders the sound in 3D space.
Apple just announced the top selling applications in the App Store for 2008 (iTunes link). We were ecstatic to see our Air Hockey right at the top of the charts as the #7 selling game out of roughly 3,000 games in the App Store. It’s also listed as #12 out of roughly 10,000 applications in the App Store.
Acceleroto‘s off to a strong start. We have another great game on the way. Standby for more fun!
