I'm still a month or two from releasing my game, but I'm wondering if anyone is considering increasing their price some time after release? I think I can polish my game and make it pretty fun so I'd love to price it at 240 but at the same time it's just a word game so 80 might be more appropriate. Hypothetically if it's selling well at 80 and I'm upfront and say it's a limited time offer do you think that increasing to 240 could work after the grace period?

Totally up to you. Just remember that you can only change your price every 90 days so your introductory price is going to be up there for a while. But it's entirely up to you how you want to lower/raise your price and for whatever marketing reasons you think are appropriate.

That's certainly up to you. One thing I've thought about is having an introductory price, and clearly stating that in the game description. Of course, the problem with that is that there is no way to verify that I'll actually drop the price after 3 months, so maybe that approach would be seen as misleading.

I'm going the opposite way... initially my price point is 400. This is when the most people will be interested in my game and when the most purchase will occur.

Sometime down the road (6 months, a year, more than a year), when sales slump, I'll cut prices in order to renew some interest.

An introductory price might work to get more initial sales, but later you're gonna hurt your sales when you up the price (people are going to be less interested when they see your price go up rather than more interested).

That's just my two cents.

George Clingerman:

Totally up to you. Just remember that you can only change your price every 90 days so your introductory price is going to be up there for a while. But it's entirely up to you how you want to lower/raise your price and for whatever marketing reasons you think are appropriate.

So the "price change every 90 days" rule counts the initial listing of the game as a price change? I would have thought you could put the game on and change the price as soon as you like but after that you have to wait 90 days before another price change...

reedake2:

So the "price change every 90 days" rule counts the initial listing of the game as a price change? I would have thought you could put the game on and change the price as soon as you like but after that you have to wait 90 days before another price change...

Yes. You can't make your first price change until it's been listed for 90 days.

Don't forget that user ratings will take into account your price. After you raise the price, people will give it a lower rating; and if you're not upfront don't be surprised if customers who bought it when it was more expensive change their rating because they're angry at you.
Aside from that, I'd say that the strategy won't work for every game, it really depends what percentage of your 80point purchasers are willing to pay 240points.

An alternative to price changes would be to republish an updated version as either "Game X Lite" or "Game X Deluxe", depending on the direction of your intended price change. Of course, there's still plenty of chance you'll annoy your customers: if you publish a Deluxe version, buyers of the standard version will be pissed they didn't get a free update. If you publish a Lite version that isn't really that much different from the full version, buyers of the standard version will be as angry as if you just cut the price.

I think a lower introductory price can work well. It may not be the best revenue maximizing strategy, but
1. You have a limited time window your game will appear in the 'latest releases' list. The lower the price, the more customers you get during that time.
2. If your game is any good, those customers will give your game a high rating, pushing you up in the longer term 'best rated' lists.
3. If you mark the price explicitly as "New Release Deal, Get it While it's Cheap", you'll sucker in more impulse purchases. I don't know how other people are buying stuff from XBLA in general, but I put most of the stuff I'm somewhat interested in on a 'maybe purchase later' list, then forget about most of them. So your best chance to sell something to me is to give me as many reasons as possible to buy now rather than later, and a 'promised' price increase later is a good reason.
4. IF your game has a multiplayer component, getting as many players as possible quickly is much more important than milking as much cash as you can out of each of them.

That said, I can see many cases where a lower introductory price completely doesn't work, it really depends on your game and your update plan. For example, I don't think many people will buy your game if you offer it at a lower price while it is, essentially, unfinished. Or if your game exploits semi-recent events (I don't think there's much potential for that on XBLIG because of the peer review delay, but anyway) and are not actually expecting any sales after the initial 90 days.

Manuel Moos:

An alternative to price changes would be to republish an updated version as either "Game X Lite" or "Game X Deluxe", depending on the direction of your intended price change.

Please, please don't do this. I don't know why people started this "Lite" garbage, but it's annoying. The last thing we need is to confuse gamers with multiple versions of the same game. Remember all the confusion over all the Vista versions? Think that but for your game. Only in the case of your game, the user is probably just going to skip it altogether rather than figure out which version is best for them. Just release the game at the price point you want and be done.

Nick Gravelyn:

I don't know why people started this "Lite" garbage

Because they were too lazy to create a new game?

Nick Gravelyn:

Just release the game at the price point you want and be done.

I second this!

Heh :) Guess the prediction about annoying people was about correct ;) (Still, I'd say having a Deluxe version that is a semi-sequel with actually good new features and at least 50% more content is sort of OK and less annoying than calling your game Deluxe, Super, Extreme or Ultra Something right from the start.)

Nick Gravelyn:

I don't know why people started this "Lite" garbage, but it's annoying. The last thing we need is to confuse gamers with multiple versions of the same game. Remember all the confusion over all the Vista versions? Think that but for your game. Only in the case of your game, the user is probably just going to skip it altogether rather than figure out which version is best for them. Just release the game at the price point you want and be done.

It started with the iPhone app store (AFAIK) where there's a free "lite" version which promotes the full version. That's not necessary for XBLIG since trials are mandatory, but Lite games are made here for size reasons. A game over 50MB is required to cost more, so a stripped-down lowest price point version is made as well. Unfortunately, two versions dillutes the product's placing on the Most Popular list, and weird things will happen when one person rates both versions. The allure of appearing on the New Arrivals list again is probably hard for some people to ignore, though.