With a little promo work & setting the dropdown menu to “Free” in iTunes Connect, Air Hockey had 87,000 downloads in 24 hours.  As you might expect, that’s the biggest single day for the paid version of Air Hockey.  Of course, all those downloads were free.  Air Hockey’s been in the App Store since Jul 31, 2008 and has sold well ever since.  In App Store terms, that’s ancient.  I’m pretty sure that’s about the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

As best we can figure, Air Hockey’s done well because it has an easy to recognize name & icon, it’s super easy to learn, it’s average game length is only a few minutes at most, it looks good, and it’s gotten lots of features added over the last year and a half.  The importance of each of these could be argued.  It’s been featured by Apple a ton too.  That definitely doesn’t hurt.  There is a little bit of black magic in this software sales stuff too.

On a normal day, that many downloads would send about $61,000 our way.  So, did it cost us $61,000 to hold the promo?  Of course not.  Directly, it cost us the sales for one day.  Since nobody leaked that Air Hockey was going to be free, sales leading up to the free day were typical of what Air Hockey’s been doing.  Weekends bring in about 30-50% more money than week days.  Mondays are always slow.  Some people start their weekend early.

The real question is what will happen from here.  Since it was free yesterday, Air Hockey’s now lost it’s place on the paid charts.  The hope is that with all the press for yesterday’s promo, enough people will buy the game today to put it back where it was on the charts.  Well, the real hope is that it’ll end up higher on the charts than before.

Other developers have tried this same promo.  At least one posted sales figures from the Appvent Calendar.  From that sample size of one, it didn’t help much – if any.  So, we tried some things different.  As I’m sure Rana Sobhany (author of the soon-to-be released awesome book on iPhone marketing) would tell us, getting press is critical.  (She’d say it better than I did though.)  Instead of sending out a canned press release that everyone in the world would ignore, we sent personalized notes to important iPhone nodes around the internet.  Touch Arcade was the first to write about the promo, followed by Gizmodo, Geek.com, and several others.  Huge success.

In 24 hours of being free, Air Hockey raced up the charts to the #47 spot in the US, #13 spot in France, #17 in Italy, #52 in Japan, #66 in Canada, #67 in Germany and #99 in the UK.  According to Free App A Day, the next highest ranked app after a one day free promo was Reign of Sword at #60 in the US – Air Hockey made it 13 places higher.  In that 24 hours, 25,000 new people posted high scores to Air Hockey’s OpenFeint high score boards. We were very temped to leave the app free for a while longer.  Another day & it might have been in the top 10.  The world will never know.

The free promo is over.  Once again, the price of ownership is a mere $0.99.  Hit it!

The folks at Free App A Day and OpenFeint were outstanding to work with.  Many thanks to everyone that made this happen.

For one day only, our hit game Air Hockey is FREE!  We’re honored to be part of a combined Free App A Day and OpenFeint promotion.

Air Hockey was originally released in July 2008 – the very early days of the App Store.  Since then, Air Hockey’s been featured by Apple in nearly every category and hit the #1 paid game spot in September 2008.  Air Hockey was top ten staple for many months & has enjoyed living in the top 100 in several game categories.  Now you can have it for free!

So, what will happen over the next 24 hours…or the next month?  How many downloads will happen when the app is free?  Will it see a boost after the promo is over?  It currently averages 4 stars over 1 1/2 years of reviews…will that change?  We shall see!

Enough words.  If you don’t have Air Hockey, you’re wrong.  Get it now!

On day 1, Feb 4, I announced it on twitter.  I don’t have a huge following there, but a few people retweeted my announcement.  A day or so later, I started a 36-hour PR-a-thon at Touch Arcade.  I announced Air Hockey Free and asked for private messages of those interested in a promo code for the full version of Air Hockey.  I got over 100 PMs & gave away 10 promo codes.  The thread had roughly 800 views and at quite a few of those downloaded the free version.  Several people PM’d me saying that they bought the full version after trying the free one.  Success?  Maybe.

About the time that the Touch Arcade promo was over, the first weekend happened.  I’ve known from my paid version over the last 5 months that weekends are the big money makers.  For free apps, there’s a download spike over weekends too.  That Sunday, roughly 3,000 people downloaded Air Hockey Free.  At that time, Air Hockey Free was in the top 100 arcade games and the top 100 kids games, but wasn’t in the top 100 games – not even close to the top 100 apps (all of these are US App Store rankings).  Visibility wasn’t huge, but better than nothing.

Monday’s have historically been the low point for sales each week.  The first Monday’s dip was about 30%.  Since then, I’ve just watched what Air Hockey Free would do by itself. A couple web pages reviewed Air Hockey Free and downloads increased throughout the week.

The next weekend caused another big jump in downloads.  By the second Monday morning, Air Hockey Free made it into the top 100 free games list.  A week later, the downloads per day had doubled again.  Yesterday roughly 9500 people downloaded Air Hockey Free for the first time.  As of today, more than 75,000 people have downloaded Air Hockey Free.

Air Hockey Free’s rankings in the US store have been fairly static over the past week.  The US downloads are still increasing, but the big push over the weekend was from somewhere else.  Germany.  I looked last night and again this morning – Air Hockey Free is the #3 app in Germany.  I love Germany.  (devs, to answer your question…no, I didn’t translate the app to German…it’s an air hockey table though – dead simple.)

I wish I’d been watching the story of the German App Store unfold.  Dang.  I’ll just have to watch it happen in the US.

If you don’t have Air Hockey Free, please download it here. Spread the word!

There’s more you devs want to know, right?  Does the free app generate full version sales?  Maybe.  The current “upgrade action” for Air Hockey Free users requires them to open the setup page while in a game, then click on a “Full Version” button.  I did this for a couple reasons.  First, I wanted the app to get approved by Apple.  The rules on what a free app can be are, well, how shall I say this, perhaps a bit open to reviewer interpretation.  Non-obtrusive design meant to me a better chance of the app making it to the App Store.  Second, I didn’t want to offend users by being to “in their face.”

Since its release, I’ve done some more research on how other free apps have touted their full versions.  I’ll just say, Air Hockey Free has the most non-offensive upgrade button I found.  A change of this strategy will likely increase full version sales.  We shall see!

Again, download Air Hockey Free.  Seriously.  Do it.  Now.

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.

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!

Take a look at Air Hockey Free! If you like it, please buy Air Hockey.