Notes

RokU is a, augmented reality game for your phone. Steve the founder of the company has decided that he wants to expand. He wants to do, put his game out there for more people but is having difficulty deciding on what exact price that he wants to sell his app for.
Steve’s move to develop is a wise decision, as there are no geographical boundaries for his product. Firstly, once his game is on the app store anyone with access to it can download it. The mobile app market that Steve is in is one that is expanding quickly. In 2016, 46% of smartphone users played games on a daily basis and in the same year exceeded £4 billion in revenue. This is a huge number and is predicted to not slow down for a while, predicted sales by 2025 will reach £31 billion. It seems as though this business is a good idea to get involved in however it does not come without competition. In the UK alone there is approximately 8000 app development businesses with a lot more world-wide. Of course them being world-wide does not make a difference to this specific market as geography isn’t an issue.
Steve’s app development company has some advantages. Firstly, they have young recent university graduates as staff, they may not have the experience but they will be ready to work more than they ever will because it is their first big chance at producing a demanding product. Steve’s company is specialised in augmented reality games and at the moment there aren’t too many of those on the app store so the competition for them isn’t as high as some of the other games. However the lack of competition could also be due to the fact that their isn’t as much of a demand for them and going into this market you run the risk of not making as many sales as predicted.
If Steve’s augmented reality game is unique and well-made then I do believe that it could be a success, as take another augmented reality game like Pokémon Go, this game was a huge success making $440 million in world-wide revenue. It even reached its milestone of $600 million in revenue within the first 90 days of launch becoming the fastest ever mobile game to do so. One idea that they could take that Pokémon Go did very well is to make it so you can interact with the other players in game through the augmented reality side of the game, this would increase their chances of getting more sales as it introduces the multiplayer aspect of the game most people will enjoy.
Steve could also highlight the idea in promotion that he is a newly established business that he has something to offer that nobody else has done yet and this could be a factor in why people will maybe trust the fact that Steve has something to offer.
For pricing Steve has two options, one of them is the freemium option were the actual app itself is free to download but then additional in-app purchases can be made on top of this. This could be a good option because then more people may buy the app itself, and then once they have played it a bit they may be more inclined to spend more money on the app after they have played it for a while. However, there is also another option, were there is no in-app purchases but the app itself will cost money, a one off fee to download the game. They both have their advantages but I think that the freemium pricing strategy will work better, as I think it is a priority that people just get to know the game first, and then they can experience it more before spending money on it.
Next, timing is going to be a very important factor in the amount of sales that you can get. For example, recently their haven’t been a lot of augmented reality games that have been released so the amount of competition that you can expect may be a lot less because of this. Also, the fact that it is an augmented reality game means that it will involve you moving around, in particular outside so during this time of year when it is generally more cold outside, people may be less inclined to go outside and play the game, so if you take this into consideration then it may be better to release a game like this one in the summer time when people are more likely to be more active.