The fact is that sooooo many things have to go right to have a successful app, and that scares me a little, given the fact that soon i will launch my first game! Anyway good luck, and if you find the problem please let us know
I find it interesting that the dark color of the main character was mentioned as a negative point again by another user. *hint*hint* It has the cute aspect of these bird games, but the color is not quite there yet. It may be a stylish decision, but I'm sure you could keep some of the darker elements and spice it up with some colored spots here and there. Guess you took your own conclusions and apply these to the next game. However the main character element is of hefty importance.
Well, while I've received a couple of comments of this nature, the main-character's cuteness and the background music has probably been the two single elements that have received most praise overall. When you get some people saying: "A" is bad and some people saying "A" is great... Well, if I was E.A. I'd probably get a focus group in to sort it out. Me? When no clear answer presents itself I go with what I like myself. I'm not opposed to color, but introducing colorful characters to Squid Drop now would not gel well. (My next game will have quite a different look though). (For readers of the "touch touch arcade thread": André Franquin's "Idées noires" was part of my stylistically inspiration).
It's a group of people that a company puts in a maze to watch which piece of cheese they go for. Oras Wikipedia puts it"A focus group is a form of qualitative research in which a group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging."
Okay thanks. Never new what they were called. Kind of seems like a degrading job, but whatever. Can't judge em till you se em.
It's not an actual maze. Usually. I wasn't in the original Portal focus group, so I can't honestly say if there was a maze or not... The cake was there though. It wasn't a lie.
It is not a full time job if you mean the people that takes part in a focus group. The companys that run the focus tests advertise for people of the right age/sex/interests and then bring them in a for a few hours or more. A bit of extra money and you can sometimes get to see cool stuff early.
Iam going to say something that hasnt been said. People who have been online for more than I say 3 months or more slowing stop trusting review and review sites. Of course a newbie might buy on impulse based on a review , but people who have read enough reviews stop trusting them and decide by many other facts whether to buy a game.
@NickFalk, so those numbers are revenues (-30% apple's cut) right? That is quite good. The iTunes market is a very strange market, some games just sell, while some don't, many believe it is all about advertising, I guess there are more factors to that than just advertising.
thanks, for the data again Nick, i will share soon, as we finish our first week of going live with Yaniv
Thx for sharing Nick !!! A lot of things to learn from this data!!! Ill be sharing my data also, once our game is released...
The figures are numbers of copies sold, so you have the basic idea. Personally Im not surprised that the advertising didnt improve sales much. If advertising is to work I think it needs to be a lot more extensive (and better) than what I am able to afford. (Although I spent just about all the money I can afford to lose). What did come as a negative surprise though was the fact that even positive reviews on several websites failed to do anything for the sales. I was very happy about the kind of reaction I managed to get from reviewers. The feedback has been almost exclusively positive and I believed getting those reviews would be the key to turning a profit. It isnt or at least it was not for Squid Drop. I must admit that the key to creating a profitable iOS game eludes me at this time. If this is still the case after a couple of more titles I might have to consider calling it quits. In case anyone would like an update: Last week I sold 5 copies and for 5 out of 7 days the sales figure was 0.
From what I see in the appstore people tend to buy 1) What they feel is a steal or great value for thier money. 2) If they see alot of good itune reviews 50 or more. 3) Eye candy cute art with an apple feature. 4) Something that looks console like. Yes its hard to predict what we will sell. Me and my partner are waiting for apple to approve our game and then we will tell you how it goes. Right now I will be honest this is a true test for us as we going head to head against trinity. We feel we have way more fun gameplay in our RetroGameBox but thats up to the consumers to decide. All I know is it took 6 months to make , and we are working on updates as we speak. I know how developers feel after taking on a long project , you hope to do well. We are crossing our fingers and hoping we do well.
What a great thread! Thanks for the numbers, they're much higher than with our initial release We didn't really know how to market our game & it seems like there is no market for our "special" endless jumper. Marketing seems to be one of the most important things when releasing a game, I will have to remember that if I ever manage to make another one.
