市场调研公司Distimo最新报告指出，手机应用商店规模的持续扩大，推动了热门付费游戏价格不断走低的趋势。在今年6月份，苹果App Store前300名热门应用的平均售价比去年同期下降了28%。

在去年6月份，Distimo调查发现苹果App Store前300名付费游戏的平均售价为2.01美元，今年1月份降至1.69美元，而6月份则降至1.44美元。

ave price of 300 most popular paid for games(from distimo)

为何游戏产品的地位如此重要？Distimo在6月份调查指出，游戏已成为其追踪的所有应用商店中最受欢迎的产品类型（游戏邦注：只有黑莓App World例外，但如果观察RIM平板电脑PlayBook平台上的黑莓App World，就不难发现游戏仍是该平台人气最旺的应用）。这表明游戏产品可以反映一家应用商店中绝大部分应用产品的定价趋势。

Distimo调查追踪了苹果各个App Store、黑莓App World、GetJar、谷歌Android Market、诺基亚Ovi Store、Palm的App Catalog和微软Windows Phone 7 Marketplace这几家应用商店，其6月份报告主要关注苹果及游戏应用市场行情，并指出微软应用商店在该时期的应用数量增长最快，其游戏数量在过去6个月中增长了149%，而非游戏应用在同一时期也增加了266%。

Distimo报道还调查了应用内置付费功能（以下简称IAP）的情况，指出在苹果App Store前200名游戏营收榜单上，含IAP功能的免费游戏所创造收益超过一半份额；在前300名免费游戏榜单上，约有35%的产品采用了虚拟货币系统。

分析师Hendrik Koekkoek表示，“在一年前，免费游戏（含IAP功能的免费游戏）所创造收益仅占顶级游戏营收榜单的8%；但在2011年6月，顶级游戏营收榜单上约有52%收益来自这些免费游戏”。这种现象表明，热门免费游戏在这一时期所产生的收益增加了十倍以上，前200名游戏的总体收益在一年内增加了79%。

freemium games generate majority of revenue(from distimo)

在Distimo发布本报告前一天，另一家移动分析公司Flurry的数据已经指出，用户在苹果App Store和谷歌Android Market免费游戏中的每笔交易平均消费额为14美元（该数据基于Flurry在过去6个月中对350万名用户，以及9万款应用的追踪调查）。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Study: Prices of top iPhone games keeps dropping

by Josh Lowensohn

As mobile application stores continue to grow in size, pricing among the most popular paid games software is going down, a new study has found.

In a new report by market research firm Distimo covering activity on various mobile app stores during the month of June, the group found that pricing among the top 300 apps in Apple’s App Store has dropped 28 percent from averages taken the same time a year ago.

During the month of June last year, Distimo tracked the average price among the top 300 paid games in the App Store at $2.01, with it dropping to $1.69 by January of this year. Last month’s average was $1.44, the firm said.

Average pricing on popular apps on Apple’s App Store dropping as time goes on.

Why are games so important? According to Distimo’s June numbers, games are the most popular overall category in all the application stores it tracks, short of BlackBerry’s App World where themes take top honors (note: if looking at BlackBerry App World apps only for Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet, Distimo says the trend continues there with games being the most popular category). That means the pricing trends for games can represent a large portion of a store’s entire catalog.

Distimo’s studies track Apple’s various App Stores, the BlackBerry App World, GetJar, Google’s Android Market, Nokia’s Ovi Store, Palm’s App Catalog, and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 Marketplace using “collected transactional data.” The report for June focused specifically on Apple and gaming, though noted that among all the catalogs, Microsoft saw the most growth in terms of its catalog, with games jumping 149 percent in the last six months, and non-gaming apps jumping 266 percent during the same period.

Freebies not so free

Distimo’s report also weighs in on in-app purchasing, noting that games that are free but have in-app purchase for virtual goods made up a little more than half of the revenue share among the 200 top grossing games on Apple’s iOS App Store, and that 35 percent of the top 300 free games were using virtual currencies.

“One year ago, freemium games (free games with featuring in-app purchases) generated only 8 percent of the revenue of top grossing games. As of June 2011, 52 percent of all the revenue of top grossing games is generated by freemium games,” wrote Hendrik Koekkoek, a Distimo analyst. “This implies that the revenue generated by top freemium games increased more than tenfold in this period, given the fact that the total revenue of top 200 grossing games increased by 79 percent in one year.”

A breakdown of revenue split across paid apps, paid apps with in-app purchase, and free apps with in-app purchase.

That news comes just a day after Flurry Analytics noted that consumers on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market were spending an average of $14 per transaction on so-called freemium games. That sampling, which ran for the past six months, was based on data from 3.5 million users and the most popular of the 90,000 applications the company tracks. （source:cnet）