Submitted my first iPhone application (game) on Monday and the days are just crawling by. Months of work just to sit on my hands! Anyone else in the waiting room right now? I heard now it takes anywhere from 5-7 days which isn't bad, I guess.
It took 4 days to get to "in review" for Letter Slide Glow. Then that day it went to Ready for Sale. This was yesterday, we delayed the launch to thursday because its closer to the weekend, 10 billion app countdown, and strapping up for marketing. Hang in there, I get anxious too. - Matt
Like mehware says, have patience and hang in there Our first game got rejected twice before it finally got approved on the third attempt, three months development time and practically an entire month of waiting before it finally went for sale. It took exactly 1 week (7 days) after submitting the App for the third time, for the game to go into "in review" state and was "ready for sale" in less than 24 hours after that. After your first game, waiting will become far more bearable and less stressful. Best of luck with the review
Thanks for the link Dave, I posted it there. nvx, mehware: Yeah it's a painful wait, mainly because what nvx said. Since this is my first submission there could be some weird thing I've missed which will lead to a rejection, then lead to yet another week of waiting. I'm crossing my fingers.
Honestly, just hang in there and get everything ready for your launch. There's never enough you can do in preparation, and along with that never enough time. As I usually go on and on about it, the real meat of the whole thing is "how do you market it" and unless you've got some super bulletproof plan/ace up your sleeve, then you need to get busy and use this time very wisely. If you don't know what you would do to promote it, now's definitely a good time to stat filling in the gaps and learning how to do that. When release comes, every app is a flash in the pan and regardless of your own efforts, it will do it's initial burst (if it will even have one) quite quickly and then drop out of sight immediately, often never to be heard from again. There is definitely a lot you can do to stretch that period out, so that all your hard development work will actually have a chance to get seen and played. Get to it man Promotion is hard! also, if it's just one week for the wait, that is awesome.. up until recently it was 2 at least.. __________________ twitter - HeadcaseGames.com Puzzling has Evolved - Get 180! FreeAppTracker.com Win ANY app you want, daily!
Not to high jack but once your ready for sale and have a release date, when does the app store in the US update with the new product? Is it 12:01 cupertino time?
Thanks for this. Yeah I'm still working on the marketing side of things. It's crazy having to wear so many hats (programmer, artist, designer, marketing, etc) but it's been pretty rewarding so far... not in terms of revenue but actually making a decent product. In terms of marketing, I definitely have no ace up my sleeve. Just trying anything and everything at this point.
Already got a few ideas in my head. Just taking a brain break. I'm not a 14 year old wiz kid programmer with near unlimited time.... so no good news story for me. I got a wife, mortgage and an unrelated full time job. Boom Boat only exists because of many sleepless nights and multiple bottles of Jamesons. btw your bulletproof outlaws game looks awesome.
I agree, there is only so much marketing and advertising developers can do. What I do while we wait is to relax and spend more time with my PS3 and other hobbies, going out with friends and trying to forget all about it. In the past I have tried to try think of other game ideas and planning ahead, but it becomes a fruitless excercise since the direction of any new project would depend entirely on whether the app in review gets accepted or rejected (for whatever reason) Our game got updated yesterday in less than 24 hours after it was submitted. Updates usually happen quickly, but there is still no guarantee there wont be any problems, so I took the day off (and would have done so for as many days as the game was waiting or being reviewed). It should all be over by Monday, so start making plans and enjoy the weekend
I just got Assassin's Creed Brotherhood to help pass the time. And you are right about starting new projects... I really don't want to start anything new until this one is out the gate. And even then, if by some miracle the game takes of, I may need to focus the majority of my time making sure it keeps selling (updates, marketing, etc).
"Processing for App Store" Is it a smart idea to do a "soft launch" like the day before (I'm planning monday launch, so soft launch on sunday) just to make sure everything works correctly?
It took about 2 weeks for our second app to get approved, keep in mind this was a web app and only 1.5 Mb. Nothing in comparison to other apps on the appstore. But once it got released we were nothing but ecstatic. What's even better is the updates fly through approval. About 1 day for our first update. Patience is needed when you become an iOS developer. The hard work starts after its approval. (Advertising, updates, user feed-back ect.)
Congratulations! Its always nice to be surprised when you least expect it Now your weekend will be much more enjoyable
