What do you consider a good launch?

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Simengie, Aug 24, 2013.

  1. Simengie

    Simengie Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    I am asking this because I am curious what other people view on the subject is.

    What do you consider (in downloads / day) to be a good launch?
    What do you consider (in downloads / day) to be acceptable app interest?

    Our company has a game that has been top 100 in category in US for most of its life. So I have my own ideas on these numbers. I will post my views in a later post after some feedback starts coming in.

    Thanks for your answers.
     
  2. flathead

    flathead Active Member

    May 16, 2013
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    I think your question is a bit broad. If you have $10k budget for marketing, your expectations would be completely different than some one without a marketing budget.

    I'd love to see your launch numbers though, what you did for marketing and if you would do anything different.
     
  3. Simengie

    Simengie Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    #3 Simengie, Aug 24, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2013
    Free App: Run And Jump
    Type: Endless Runner
    Marketing spent: $19.95 USD. Yes that is correct at nineteen and change. That was a PRMAC press release. No other money on the app has been spent. Right app at the right time with a great name, cool icon and really good keywords. No sites reviewed the game. It was posted in TA, Mac Rumors and RayWenderlich forums. Was posted to /r/iosgaming and tweeted out. Twitter re-tweets got it in front of about 25K people.

    Launch Week DL / Day: 1500-2000
    Week 3 to 46: 2000-5000 DL / Day
    Peaks for holidays during week 4 to 46 as high at 12.5K per day.
    Xmas week was 8-12.5K per day. 110K DL in Decemeber 2012 alone.
    Week 47 to 54 DL / Day: 1500 to 3500
    Week 54 to Present(week 74) DL / Day: Tapered off from 1500 to 350.

    Currently over 817K downloads as of today.
    At WWDC 2013 was identified as being in the top 20K apps on the App Store based on then current DL volume. The period of time Apple sampled to come up with 20K list we had on average 690-830 DL / Day.

    As I said I have a good idea what is successful. I am curious what people consider a good launch and sustained numbers. If people that have $10K bucks to blow on marketing are included that is fine. I suspect those are people with businesses or just money to burn.

    Consider the questions a getting to know the mindset of the folks that do post in this forum.

    Would I do anything different? Chartboost ads sooner. Estimate I lost 25K+ in ad revenue by not having them sooner.
     
  4. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    Wellington
    A "good launch" for PikPok is a game that reaches the Top 10 free downloads in the US, and generates about 1m downloads in the first week.
     
  5. flathead

    flathead Active Member

    May 16, 2013
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    It would be awesome if you explained what you do for launches and how you obtain these numbers if you're willing to share.
     
  6. ns804apps

    ns804apps Well-Known Member

    Nov 19, 2012
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    Richmond, VA
    Clearly I am one the newbie side, I think with experience both of those launches EVERYONE would want. I was pleased with our first launch with zero spent on marketing and having no clue what we were doing with 1500 in the first week the problem is now it has dropped off to 1-5 a day pretty disappointing, but we made every mistake possible pushed it to market before it was ready had an aggressive update strategy, but updated with a LARGE bug we missed spent two weeks killing our audience before we could get it fixed and we just got the game two weeks ago where it should have been at launch so now we are working on review sites and some pr..

    Some things I would have done much much earlier I would have used Facebook mobile app installs at the beginning, we had a successful review contest here on TA that yeilded 30 reviews and we felt they were honest as we asked for and used the feedback to make some tweaks to the game, we would have built a larger social network prior to launch, but I think everyone's opinion is different. I was happy with our launch, but not impressed I think any launch that gets 1500+ downloads is pretty good for a rookie like us, we did not have the network or following to push the game to. I fully anticipate our next launch to be in the 2000-5000 downloads day one and continue to grow with each additional launch as we grow our network..

    That being said I think everyone is open to any suggestions on what successful launches have done..
     
  7. Sanuku

    Sanuku Well-Known Member

    Download any Title on the iTunes Store that was published by PikPok or that was published by AdultSwim and created by PikPok and you will have your answer.
     
  8. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    It really comes down to two things; quality and cross promotion.

    Pre-launch, we spend a relatively long time on our games with a lot of focus on polish and usability in an effort to reach a higher than average standard of quality. Our games have a tendency to generate a lot of user buzz and catch the eye of Apple for possible featuring.

    At launch, we lean heavily on cross promotion within our network, as well as (non paid) cross promoting with other aligned developers and publishers. Pure brute force.
     
  9. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    whats the answer?
     
  10. Sanuku

    Sanuku Well-Known Member

    Q-u-a-l-i-t-y ;)
     
  11. ogloguy

    ogloguy Active Member

    Apr 24, 2013
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    Game Developer
    Wow! A million downloads for spending USD 19.5 is amazing. But I am curious what you mean by 'right time'. App Annie says you launched it on 29th Feb, 2012. Anything special about it?
     
  12. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    It is interesting you say that. i downloaded one to see what you meant and tried flick american football one. The gameplay was good, simple and addictive for a short period, however the ad's regularly crashed my galaxy S4.

    I have seen much better games not get that attention, so from my point of view marketing is the key to their success, which is clearly awesome (and i am jealous!! :)).



    To OP who regrets not using chartboost, why chartboost over admob?
     
  13. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    Well, to be fair, we launched that game in January 2010, 3.5 years ago :)

    A more recent example of our work would be Into the Dead (www.intothedead.com) which has over 15m downloads to date, and also got off to a great start at launch. Though it didn't actually hit its stride until the Android version launched. On that note, all our upcoming releases will now launch iOS and Android simultaneously to better leverage cross platform word of mouth.
     
  14. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    I also picked it cause it was the first one in your signature! It seems like it is still getting a good number of downloads so clearly doing something right. You have a built in audience to advertise too as well(which you have built over time).

    I was thinking of buying admob ads to try and launch my next game into the charts but I have noticed by googling a bit a number of people with large numbers of clicks and small numbers of downloads (I don't know if this is against the norm and they are just angry, or if it is normal).

    I am willing to spend a small amount to at least let my game be seen and give it a chance. Just putting it in the app store and hoping for the best is unrealistic for hoping for those downloads.
     
  15. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    We still get thousands of downloads a day, yes. A sequel that will appear for that game at some point, so I guess we'll see how much traction we can get with that.

    On a related note, time to update that signature ;)


    Facebook mobile ads seem to be the best performing ads for your buck at the moment.
     
  16. Simengie

    Simengie Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    Temple run had just gone free, and Endless Runners where the "it" game to have most of 2012. If you had one with a nice icon and catchy name with good keywords for discovery then it got downloaded.
     
  17. Simengie

    Simengie Well-Known Member

    May 14, 2012
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    CB = $5000+ a month
    Admob = $800-1000 a month

    Nuff said.
     
  18. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    Ohhhh, i guess i should be looking at chartboost then. Are the fill rates good?
     
  19. PikPok

    PikPok Well-Known Member

    Nov 26, 2009
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    We just launched, funnily enough, Flick Kick Field Goal 2014 - a little sooner than I implied ;)

    http://www.appstore.com/flickkickfieldgoal2014

    The game has a "daily dispute" challenge which is capturing most of the active audience, so if you want to follow our download success or failure in real time with some real metrics, then just download that game and add up the number of "supporters" on both sides of the daily dispute.

    It resets at about midnight EST back to zero when a new dispute is generated, so it is effectively our daily active user count (DAU).

    Hope that helps gives some people a feel for how our launch curves look. And hopefully this one is as successful as our previous games :)
     
  20. Destined

    Destined Well-Known Member

    Aug 11, 2013
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    I will download it. The first one was such a simple game, that it made me realise that sometimes you don't needs loads of levels etc, just a simple concept. But I wonder how retention is.
     

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