Apple staff pick featured on a weekly basis. I believe the new featured appear on Thursday now. From my understanding, they are generally hand picked. If you

Apple staff pick featured on a weekly basis. I believe the new featured appear on Thursday now. From my understanding, they are generally hand picked. If you are a known publisher, they seem to pay attention to those. Big name titles, like Madden I've seen featured on launch. Lots of indie developers also get featured, and my understanding of it is that they pay attention to the same outlets other people do. That means iPhone app review sites and anything that gets you media exposure also brings your app to their attention. I run TouchArcade, which is an iPhone game review site, and I've heard that some devs have been told by Apple that they were seen on the site prior to featuring. That's not to say that it's TouchArcade specific, but I think it's true for any significant exposure. So the answer is basically, there's no magic in as a small indie dev. Try to get as much exposure as you can, and you may be picked.