Paid applications with built-in test is downloaded 70 times paid more than the application without that feature, according blogpost this week by Microsoft's senior director of Windows product management Todd Brix Phone.
"Trials generate higher sales," he added. "Nearly one out of 10 trial download an application to convert to purchase and produce 10 times more income, on average, than paid applications that do not include the function of the court."
Note, the Brix was talking about the application, but the game is the category most likely to take advantage of Microsoft's application session API. This is not a new idea for the game industry, of course. Sites such as RealArcade used to develop the trial offer for one hour of casual games before asking the players to stump up to keep playing.
Brix said that Windows Phone 7 users to make their minds quickly whether an application or game is worth paying, based on experiments. "More than half the download trial that converts to sales to do it in one day, and most of them within two hours," he writes, while warning that the applications do better or worse, depending on "quality and nature" to them.
There is an interesting contrast to be made with the IOS and the Apple App Store here. Recently, Gameloft - one of the largest publishers of mobile games across all platforms - launched two new IOS game using a similar experimental model.
Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden
Players download full version Odyssey Sacred: Rise of Ayden and Starfront: Collision free, but after playing a bit far through the game are asked to pay through the payment in-app. Within a month, both have been released back in the App Store as a paid game, with Gameloft referring in a statement that "feedback from many players, who do not feel comfortable with new free models with the purchase in-app".