iOS Game Revenue Survey

[OTrain13]

Hi everyone:

I launched a survey today to try to gather some data about what the iOS games market looks like. I've been building games for iOS for over 3 years and I keep reading articles that speculated on "average" iOS game revenue, while no one talks about things like "median" and "standard deviation".

Given that most of us are indies and don't have the resources to hire large market research firms, I thought I'd put together a survey and share the results publicly. Please check out my blog post on the subject and take the survey, if you're making iOS games. I'll be posting the results next week to share with the iOS game dev community.

Blog post: iOS Game Revenue Survey (http://bit.ly/iossurvey)
Direct survey link: Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8BZFHRX)

Please help spread the word however you can! Even if you only have one game that made $17, please fill it out. The more people we have take the survey, the more representative and useful the data will be.

Thanks!
Owen

[Luke Kellett]

Hey Owen,

Great to see indies giving back to the community.

I think it would also be interesting to get info on the following from your results:

If the devs are full timers
Rankings of games
How much time is spent on projects
How much money is spent on projects
How much of this time/money is spent on dev vs marketing

[OTrain13]

Hey Owen,

Great to see indies giving back to the community.

I think it would also be interesting to get info on the following from your results:

If the devs are full timers
Rankings of games
How much time is spent on projects
How much money is spent on projects
How much of this time/money is spent on dev vs marketing


I am asking whether respondents are full-time, part-time, etc, so that data should be available. I'm not asking any of the other questions, so I won't be able to draw any conclusions there.

The original draft of the survey had a lot more questions, like you're asking. However, in talking to several people who have run surveys before, everyone's advice was the same: keep it as simple and short as possible to get the important data. The goal is to get a lot of people taking the survey, and the longer it gets, the fewer people complete it. So I had to make some trade-offs, unfortunately. Hopefully we'll still get some useful data out of it. :)

Owen

[Luke Kellett]

Well I for one and definitely looking forward to seeing the results :-)

Have many people filled out the survey so far?

[OTrain13]

Well I for one and definitely looking forward to seeing the results :-)

Have many people filled out the survey so far?

Just under 150, as of this morning. Need more data! :)

Owen

[Grizzlage]

Just filled it out :) Cant wait to see the numbers.

[MetaPhx]

Filled it out too. Anxiously awaiting data :).

[mhopson]

Was going to do the survey until I realized that we haven't released our first game yet.. ha. Just about to release in a couple of weeks but can't wait to see what this survey says.

[OTrain13]

Hi everyone:

The survey closes on Monday at noon, EDT! Please take a minute to fill it out, if you haven't already. Thanks!

Blog post: iOS Game Revenue Survey (http://bit.ly/iossurvey)
Direct survey link: Survey Monkey (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8BZFHRX)

Owen

[Clockworkapps]

Done... My numbers are disheartening low though

[OTrain13]

The iOS Game Revenue Survey closes today at noon EDT! Last chance to get your numbers in!

http://bit.ly/iossurvey

Owen

[Manta Research]

I put our numbers in. I hope you get a lot of responses so it can be meaningful.

You may want to do a followup survey which you leave up for longer though...

[OTrain13]

I put our numbers in. I hope you get a lot of responses so it can be meaningful.

You may want to do a followup survey which you leave up for longer though...

The survey is very close to 250 responses, so hopefully the numbers will have some value. :)

I'm not quite sure how much value there would be in leaving the survey up for longer, though. There has definitely been a steady decline in the number of people taking the survey each day. We were at 200 responses by the 3rd day, and there's only been 15 in the last 24 hours. My guess is you wouldn't see many more responses even if you left it up for a month...but if someone wants to try, I say go for it. :)

Owen

[DemonJim]

This is a brilliant idea, and it's great you've had ~250 responses.

Given it is completely anonymous not only will people be honest about their earnings but you will hopefully get a fairly typical spread of developers filling it out.

I think if the media showed more of what an average iOS developer made (rather than only ever highlighting earnings of some recent #1 hit game) there would be less animosity from some gamers who do seem to often resent having to pay for apps, and particularly for extra content via IAP.

Will be really interesting to see your findings.

[smuttlegiaco]

I agree with DemonJim 100%. I also did the survey. Can't wait for the final numbers. :)

[OTrain13]

The survey is now closed! Thanks to everyone who participated. I'm going to start going over the data now, and I hope to have the results written up in the next day or two. It will all be posted on my blog here:

http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/

I'll post a link to these forums when it's ready.

Owen

[Aztlan.Games]

Congratulations! Looking forward!

[ChunkoutGames]

Looking forward to seeing the results!

[OTrain13]

The results are out!

http://bit.ly/iosrevsurvey

Owen

[Aztlan.Games]

Thanks for the good work!

[DemonJim]

Sterling work Owen! Some great insights and figures in that report. Using the median really does make the figures lower than what we might imagine. I hope every iOS website out there and every iOS blogger covers your findings.

My impression is that despite the fairly small sample this is pretty representative of the App Store as a whole. Hopefully one day we'll get something similar from Apple directly so we'll know for sure.

I think if you were to run another survey (with the extra publicity from this one) then you'd get thousands of replies next time.

[NinjaPlanetStudios]

Good stuff, thanks! :)

[Therealtrebitsch]

Maybe you could write a press release on prmac, so more bloggers can see your survey results and spread the word about it.

[Manta Research]

Excellent summary, thanks! I'll admit I was one of the dummies who confused revenues for all apps in the last 12 months and not just apps released in the last 12 months. Perhaps the wording could have been clearer if there were lots of others who misunderstood the question as well.

I'm looking forward to another survey with more targeted questions and more respondents. Now that you can point to the value of the results from this survey, I think it will be easier to convince devs to spend a bit more time filling out a more detailed survey.

[OTrain13]

Thanks, everyone! I'm glad you're finding it useful.

Excellent summary, thanks! I'll admit I was one of the dummies who confused revenues for all apps in the last 12 months and not just apps released in the last 12 months. Perhaps the wording could have been clearer if there were lots of others who misunderstood the question as well.

I agree 100%. It was completely my fault that the questions were misinterpreted, and I'm really annoyed with myself for that. I don't blame the respondents at all. Like I said, I'm not a statistician...maybe I should have enlisted one to help me word the survey. ;)

I'm looking forward to another survey with more targeted questions and more respondents. Now that you can point to the value of the results from this survey, I think it will be easier to convince devs to spend a bit more time filling out a more detailed survey.

That could cool. If it's me who does it, it'll have to wait a while, as this one has taken up way more of my time than I anticipated. I'd really like to keep working on my game now. ;)

Owen

[IntrinsicGames]

Just to echo what everyone else has been saying, thanks for putting this together (and thanks to all the developers who who took the survey as well!)

[DomAjean]

Thank you for this great survey!

[Luke Kellett]

Sweet job dude!

[MrLeQuack]

Thanks a lot for the results, it's all very interesting and congrats, i see tuaw.com has posted an article about it!

[Clockworkapps]

Slashdotted

http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/09/30/0730251/top-1-of-ios-game-developers-make-a-third-of-all-revenue

[Barcâ]

I was a statistics major (since changed) and the first thing you would be judged on is that the sample was taken from a community who chose to take it. That in itself creates instant bias and possibly skewed results.

As thats neither here nor there (and you included a disclaimer, :D) I must say that the data is interesting enough. I hear equal stories about developers who make tons of money and those who make none. I was just glad to see something like this done.

Thank you Owen!

[Justin@PhykenMedia]

Just wanted to say "Thanks!" for putting this survey together and crunching the data!

There is definitely some interesting data there and hopefully in the future we can continue to have more surveys that allow us to look further into app store.