EA's App Store price war
As we previously reported, EA dropped prices on most of its iOS apps this week, and that sale sent shockwaves through the App Store's holiday season. We've seen tons of awesome new apps hit the store in the past few weeks, but if you look at the Top Paid apps right now, most of them are older EA favorites. EA currently has 6 of the top 10 apps on the store (with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 leading the way -- a big name title released for just 99 cents), and it's peppered throughout the rest of the top 50 as well. The biggest recent release on the list is probably Infinity Blade, which, despite extremely solid reviews and lots of press about its release, is currently down at number 16.
In short, EA has kicked off a price war, and there's a time limit on this one. Apple is freezing the charts on December 23, which means that any games in the top 200 at that time will remain there over the all-important Christmas holiday, the point at which we've seen the biggest jumps in App Store sales (due to all the new hardware out there under the tree).
At least one big publisher has already responded in kind -- Gamevil has announced a price drop on many of its apps, including the just-released Illusia and Nom, although it couldn't make it down to the 99 cent price that EA is offering. I would say look out for more big sales in the next few days. Companies have had a lot of success with App Store sales in the past, and as we get closer to that holiday freeze and the ensuing burst of sales, they're much more likely to start pulling out the big guns.
