Yes, you really need to make the top list for an app in the US to survive. I've been lucky, ABC Letters Tracing has been in the top 100 list around the 50-70 in Educational games. And our other game Distant Assassin 2 has been in the 60-70 in Adventure games.
Actually this makes perfect sense.. ~10-20% of the iPhones are being purchased worldwide with intention of being ran on unsubsidized networks. People would have never bought them if they knew they could not jailbreak/unlock the phones and run them on the local carrier...
How are the sales per day for Tyrian, if you don't mind me asking? Being in the "What's Hot" section must help a lot
The paid version, featured in "What's hot" section is pushing more copies when the lite version, lost in the sea of other apps... Is not that weird?
Hello everybody, I'm not a developer, but I found this thread very interesting. Why do so many people keep developing for Iphone with a profit margin this thin and such unpredictable sales even for quality games like 1112? I wouldn't have thought that app sales outside the US mattered so little; because even here in Switzerland every time Apple launches a new Iphone, it's sold out for weeks! The only way of keeping track of new apps for me is with AppZap or the various IPhone Gaming Sites. I think Apple needs to radically reorganise their whole Appstore. It's way out of control now. There's really no overview of all the apps anymore.
i just wanted to ask, maybe i just want to make a little money, and not have sales like flight control and pocket god. i mainly want to develop so i can have more money to pursue music. im also trying to be realistic about it, i just wondered what it would take to just "settle" in terms of sales and stuff.
Marketing, the one of the many parts that suck about this process. Like the devs before said, most people don't go to IGN, TA, Slide to Play, or any other specialty sites, but they do offer a decent amount of momentum up the charts, right? Now I know Blocked reached the #1 after being buried since it's release at August last year, but more the exception than the rule. Exactly how big is your window to climb the charts after release? Around, maybe 2-3 days, which (along with pre-release hype, or as much as one person can muster) you use to concentrate all your energy in getting the word out, I'm guessing?
maybe they didn´t know, that their game didn`t interest anybody? i think, it`s the same as it was for me: just want to make a game. and don`t have to spend much work into searching a publisher. it was really fun to make the game and i`m looking forward for the next game. it didn`t sell? so what?! maybe our next game will. me, too. to get into the sub-charts (don`t know the correct word) in austria or swiss, you only need 13 sales. really surprised about that. i think, you have to be big in the usa, england and maybe germany. don`t know, how about japan.
Because of many reasons: a) it's a phone so you can get away with lower quality titles b) it's pretty easy to develop for the iPhone - you can do everything in C/C++ and OpenGL/OpenAL c) the App Store is a wonderful distribution channel despite it's flaws And not all are doing bad. Competition is getting stiffer, but there is always room for high-quality innovative titles. US cater for about 60% of the market, so 40% is still pretty important. However, to get an overview of those 40% is a tedious job, you will have to check each country's store individually. To have a look at the 60% you just need to go to the US store. Agree. First things first, fix the top #100 lists so people can find the high quality stuff easier. And also, add more sorting options and more top lists.
Good attitude to have, I enjoyed making my first game, and am looking forward to making another. I didn't get rich off Rogue Touch, nor did I expect to, I designed it as the game I always wanted to play when I was younger! To give you perspective on Japan- it is a bit bigger market than many european countries if you'e got the right kind of app/game. I made it into the Top 25 of ALL apps briefly in Japan this May (was the #6 game and #1 RPG and #1 Adventure too). That was done with roughly 150 sales a day... So I'd imagine the #1 of ALL apps in Japan probably pulls in between 2,000 to 4,000 sales per day. After the USA, Japan has been my largest market for the last four months or so.
A couple reasons. One, for the same reason people buy lottery tickets, which is that they vastly overestimate their chances of winning. Two, they genuinely enjoy game development and the opportunity for people to appreciate their work, even if it's only a few hundred customers. It's not all doom and gloom financially either. While the power-law sales distribution means very few are getting rich, it also means that many people are at least getting a few dollars a day, which is a lot more than nothing. Consider two development scenarios, call them Contract and App. In both scenarios you work for two months full-time on development. In the Contract scenario, you're paid $20K cash. In the App scenario, you develop an iPhone app. At the end of development in each case you have an asset: the $20k cash in one scenario, an app in the App store in the other. With your $20K invested conservatively, it will produce something on the order of 5% per year, or around $3/day. That's not so very different from the return on your app. The question is, how long is the app's tail---how long will it keep selling in dribs and drabs? I can tell you our apps continue to sell in small quantities with no advertising expenditure at all, nearly a year after release. I suspect this long tail could go on for years, though of course there'll be some need for additional time for updates. One big difference in the two scenarios is that while you might actively hate your contract work, you will actually enjoy your app development.
Sales... I need to update my blog... but. The last 2 months Mouse House is making a a steady $6.50 a day average. AKA it pays for coffee Will have to see what happens when MH 2 is out and we can start cross promoting etc.
@nickcaveman: Look at me, I didn't even consider fun as a factor in developing a game when I wrote that post. Alas, I don't know anything about game development. If it's fun to do and you get some revenue, that is great Yeah, it's really surprising on how 2-3 sales can get you in the top list in smaller countries. @anders: a) True. Hadn't thought of that. b) C++ is one of the more complex programming languages, isn't it? OpenGL/AL is the graphics library? I tried Visual Basic, didn't get very far though. What I can handle is something like Multimedia Fusion It's much more visual. c) It's also faster to distribute programs, isn't it? @portablehOle: Thanks for the in-debt answer. Isn't the Power-Law stuff similar to Networking? In that only few get enough people to really generate an income? It is great to have the liberty of doing what you like best instead of beeing bound by a contract. $20K is $20'000, right? (stupid question, sorry)
The distribution of connections in many networks often follows a power law. Power law distributions appear in cases where there is a 'rich-get-richer' feedback loop, like the App Store's top lists where sales -> higher ranking -> more sales, etc. Right.
b) It's matter of personal preference. I dislike ObjC for instance and use it as little as possible. OpenGL is for graphics and OpenAL is for audio. c) I'd say it would have been somewhere between hard and impossible without the App Store.
I wanted to dev games when the App store was announced March 2008. I knew I had to get in the first round, which ended up being 500 apps at launch of the store. Then the first 1,500. Then there were 10k apps. Now, 60k. I made nothing app-wise, just been enjoying the fruits of other's labor The point is: It reminds me of the story of the little girl who wanted to be a great ballet dancer, and kept putting it off year after year, until she was a teenager, 20, 30, etc. always saying "it's too late now", but it never was. So, hindsight being 20/20, I ask you this: How many apps will be in the store in one years time from now? 2 years time? How many iPhones and iTouches or other devices like the Verizon Apple tablet will there be in the same time frames? Finally, what is your passion? And as Arn said, "DON'T BE LAZY!" GET ER DONE
I've been doing regular posts of my app downloads on the blog. http://sudokugrab.blogspot.com/2009/07/sales-stats-update-5-or-6-months-on-app.html Sudoku grab did very well for a while - being featured by Apple really does the job. At the moment it's getting between 10 and 20 downloads a day, which I'm pretty happy with.
