I know some of you out there like to know sales figures so I thought I'd let you all know how sales of our Halloween version of Frootrees went over the Halloween weekend. Well we sold a grand total of 11. That means we earned roughly $7.70. It's unlikely now that Halloween is over that we will sell much more. We could double that over the coming weeks. I think it's quite obvious we're not going to be blown away by these numbers and there are a number of reasons for these low sales that I won't go into here. Let's just say we've learned a lot. To those that bought it, hope you enjoyed it - a lot of time and love went into it - so thank you for your support. The Tin Man
What a disappointment, sorry for that. Frootrees (original) is a fun game. Whatever is next for you guys, I hope it's 100,000x more successful!
Wow, that is unfortunate. I hope the original version is selling better. is Frootrees Halloween exactly the same as Frootrees, just a reskin? You might be able to release the Halloween version for free or roll it into the full version somehow.
@ PhagoCychotic Thanks for your kind comments - glad you enjoyed the original @ Flickitty I don't have the total sales of Frootrees to hand but we'd be lucky to hit 150 since it was originally released which again is pretty poor. The Halloween version has the same gameplay of the original although we did tweak various aspects. The art and sound were a complete overhaul, and we had a spooky piece of music scored especially for the game. Most people that play the game really enjoy it and we've had some great reviews - its just hard to get people to buy it in the first place it seems.
thats a shame to hear in all honesty, i loved frootrees a lot and was in ma sig for quite a while. im not a fan of halloween so wouldnt have purchased it but im suprised to hear the original hasnt broken a 1000 sales at least, especially when i see the callibre of tat that is in the top 50 sometimes wish ya luck in future ventures tinman, dont lose heart bud!
I haven't tried Frootrees, but I really like the artwork. What categories are you in? We do pretty well in Adventure and appear in the Top 100 Worldwide (even in USA). We never saw much happening in the Action category, so we moved to Puzzle and immediately saw a jump worldwide and even appear in the Top 100 Puzzle Category. I would think you would be Family/Puzzle or Family/Kids or some other variation.
About 150!!??!! That's really shocking...I had no idea that sales would be so low for such a great casual game. Seems like a need for exposure (non-TA exposure) would boost sales. But I have no idea what kind of outlet would work best.
@ Acidbottle Thanks a lot for your support and kind words. You've been one our biggest promoters on TA and we really appreciate it. We've been surprised too with the low sales, but it seems to be a common theme with a lot of iphone devs that I talk too. @ Flickitty Thanks for the category advice. I've just changed ours to see what happens. I'll keep ya posted. @ PhagoCychotic Yeah not good numbers for what we believe is a great gaming experience for a dollar. Regarding exposure we've done as much as we can do without a big marketing spend. We have a website, facebook page, twitter feed, and have been reviewed across a range of sites, most of which have been highly positive of Frootrees. Most iPhone or iPod Touch owners though still don't know it exists as most owners don't look around on review websites and won't be bothered to trawl through the app store to randomly happen on it. It's a real shame.
Try making it free for a while. If you give a way 100,000 copies, and 5% convince their friends, you'll at least make some money. The potential for it to catch fire is there to. I'm not saying your game would have the same success, but this is how Fling! rose to the top. There are other games that went free for a while where this didnt work, obviously, so there are a bunch of factors at play. One major one being how many hardcore fans you get by the free give away. Still, what do you have to lose?
I think this may be true at this point. Drastic changes require drastic measures. How many Promo codes did you give out? Who did these codes go to? When was your last update (Halloween version doesn't count)? Have you ever appeared under New Apps? Yeah, I know, I have a lot of questions. Make it free for a couple days to gain some ground. I know I'll download it and talk about it. edit: Shouldn't this be under the Developer section, or is the average person actually interested in stuff like this? I personally find it disturbing, realistic and heartbreaking. I've always told myself that if we made it big, we would help other developers get off the ground.
I am always surprised when I see descriptions that read like they were written in 5 minutes on apps that look like they took months to create. I had never heard of Frootrees or Frootrees Halloween until this thread, so I went and had a look. I looked at the Halloween version first in the App store, and the first thing that hit me is how lacking your description is when compared to Frootrees original. There are also no reviews for your game, (at least as my Iphone shows it) and you also do not post any impressions from review sites yourselves. Perhaps an update is in order or a promo code giveaway to garner some reviews? ..although with halloween over perhaps there is no point..maybe rename it "spooky" edition to give it some legs? All that aside, I really don't know how many people purchase Halloween related apps to begin with. I have purchased a few Christmas related applications to "get in the spirit", but Halloween is one of those holidays that comes and goes for me. In any case, good luck with Frootrees!
totally agree about giving it a rename, frootrees: haunted forest or sommit (yea im not very original either lol) anyways, i picked this up, not out of sympathy or anything, but in hindsight i would have happily payed twice as much for it anyways. its every bit as good as the original i think the original had pretty positve reviews from the TA readers and the thread was gaining a bit of momentum, but like many titles it gets burried under the rubble. i think a few promo codes or a freebie friday giveaway is a good idea, if only to get some reviews up on the board. im still sometimes persuaded by good positive reviews on the appstore.
I might try leaving it free for longer then just a Friday to get a big userbase that can recommend it to friends later. A Friday or weekend may not do move more then a couple thousand given that the game is not generally known beyond TA. Fling gave away over 100,000 copies before going back to paid.
@ Flickitty We gave out a lot of promo codes in the early days to review sites and got some lovely little reviews and even now have a very small core group of followers. Sadly none of the "big" sites were interested though and never got major publicity even with a press release. We've never appeared in new apps or anywhere noticeable on the app store. We've released one update and have another one coming soon that fixes a very small bug. Maybe this should be in the developer section (actually my fault for posting in the wrong section) but it doesn't hurt for consumers to see the reality of the situation for us small iphone devs I suppose. @ Blueseas25 Duly noted regarding the description. I will look into that asap! Thanks for the feedback. @ Acidbottle Aw thanks man. @ ArtNJ Think we will look into the "free" situation at some point soon I think. As you say we have nothing to lose really. Good advice so thanks for that!
It seems like a lot of these smaller casual gems need to be featured on the App store front page in order to get some sales. These review sites (including this one) represent such a small demographic in the iDevice purchasing community. I wish there was a trick to getting featured by Apple. I own so many lovely little games that no one plays, it's a shame.
