Prices were slightly higher at launch, with $4.99 and $9.99 being fairly common price points. (Super Monkey Ball, the first heavily-promoted game I can recall,

Prices were slightly higher at launch, with $4.99 and $9.99 being fairly common price points. (Super Monkey Ball, the first heavily-promoted game I can recall, was $9.99.) But by Christmas 2008, less than a year later, prices were about what they were today. In my opinion / recollection, prices dropped because some developers experimented and discovered that they could make more money at $0.99 - the increased unit sales more than made up for it. Of course, those increased unit sales were partly because they were one of the few quality applications selling at $0.99 - and once the other developers saw how the $0.99 apps were cannibalizing their $4.99 sales, they followed along to compete. I don't recall Apple influencing pricing publicly, but god knows if they had any discussions with their initial, pre-announcement partners. It wouldn't surprise me if they pushed Sega to get Super Monkey Ball out at $9.99, since it sold for much more than this on earlier game platforms, but that's just me speculating.