Plus, if you cut the price, the number of players should increase, solving one of the current complaints of low numbers in the game. If you raise the price, it follows that the number of players should be reduced, and that makes the complaints about player numbers worse.
Maybe, maybe not.
If I took a dog turd and put it on a bun and charged you 10 cents, would you buy it and eat it just because it is cheap? What if I charged you 5 cents?
I'm not saying AH is a turd on a bun, just that taking something that is not appealing to the market and lowering the price, doesn't necessarily mean more sales.
Conversely, sometimes raising a price on something can make it even more desirable. Dos anyone think a Jaguar is worth what they are paying from a engineering point of view?
You don't always want more customers unless the net profit exceeds the additional overhead. The more players you have, the more support and other hassles. Many hotels will keep their prices high even with empty rooms. More guests at a cheaper price doesn't necessarily pay for the additional costs and house-keeping.
Ideally, you want the least number of customers at the highest revenue you can get to get a profit. More money, less hassles.
So from a strategic point of view, if I were working from Goldman-Saches venture capital division, I'd be asking how hard can we squeeze the existing customers, who have 20 years sunk cost and a large chunk their identities and social networks tied up in this game, before enough of them leave to prevent it from being a net profit. 20 cents a day? They would give up FSO and Scenarios over 20 cents a day?
BTW, I'm at least half joking.
