Pricing is a funny thing. You'd think lower prices would lead to more demand.
If your product isn’t selling, (paradoxical though it may sound) raising the price can be a much better idea than lowering it and potentially both tarnishing your brand and making less profit at the same time.
And this is without even considering the notion of Veblen goods, which is an even more extreme example.
It’s not that the high(er) price itself makes the product desirable — it just happens to help tell the right story about the product.
As somebody who has released several games and apps where some did well and others were crickets it seems like a combination of randomness/timing, visibility (related to the previous), and simply - is it good or not? If your game is amazing people will jump through hoops to try to play it. You can sell a great game for $40 or $60, and a very great game for $60 then $15/month to keep playing.
But you can't raise the price on a low-quality product and expect a great sales response. A lot of investor types say this out of hopes, or because they want that racehorse to run faster, but IME it's: Is it good? Charge market. Otherwise, free or freemium, you might even have to give away the code to get developer interest to help.
Well… obviously.
My point wasn’t that raising the price is always a good idea; it was that it sometimes is. It’s worth mentioning because even the idea that it’s sometimes sensible is surprising to many.
But I’m talking about products you’d buy regularly rather than one-time purchases like games or music.
Games going on sale at launch also makes me assume its just because no one is buying it, but apparently more people buy games at launch if it says they're on sale. I don't get it.