Sales Stats Roundup 1st half 09

Hi there, thanks for the info. Wish more devs would post their stats though, we'd have more concrete predictions on trends.

I'm all for disproving the appstore-goldmine theory, and I believe such data helps greatly. Cheers!

 

I feel like a noob, whats this theory you talk about?

 

I think it depends on what you consider a goldmine. Personally, as an indie developer, I would be very happy consistently selling 50-100 copies a day, which for a $0.99 app would be about $15-20k per year after Apple's cut. I would be lying to myself if I thought that an extra $15-20k wouldn't do me any good. Too many developers try to compare themselves to Flight Control and Pocket God.

 

That money really adds up.

Imagine 10 apps at 200 per day - 2,000 sales per day x.70 = $1,400 in net revenue, which equals = $42,000 per month and $504,000 per year.

Not bad, but nothing compared to those making hundreds of thousands per month.

 

I'd like to second that light-hearted request .. it'd really be of help to a lot of us.

 

Sure, 15-20k sounds great, but that'd depend on you selling 50-100+ copies a day for an entire year, which would then depend on you being on atleast one of the top 100 lists.
Hoping to sell 100+ copies a day per title consistently(a year would seem like a stretch) is becoming increasingly difficult.
It *was* possible a while back, I'd doubt such hopes would be valid as we move into 2010...

It's the numbers really, we'll have some 2000 (if not more) *great* titles battling for 100*10(categories) slots... (again, you'd already know that a majority of those titles are battling for 3-5[action,adventure,arcade,puzzle,rpg..] of those 10 slots)

 

I'd love to and I will, eventually. I am obligated to hold on to that information until the end of June due to a request of a recent partner.

 

the appstore-goldmine theory is sound, there is a sign outside saying goldmine, however the mine only contains salt, at least in my experience In a month I have only sold around 40 for my first app with sales seemingly dried up, a couple of others have sold less than double figures in the 3-4 weeks they have been available.

 

Unfortunately, this is as much a business as anything else.

There has been a great change in the AppStore since Apple unlocked the flood gates to allow any developer in.

The Bad = Competition is so great and the market is so saturated that it is very difficult without an effective marketing model and mass market game to even be profitable.

The Good = The user base (potential customer count) is much greater than before. The figure to aim for was first set by Demiforce and their game Trism at $250,000, but that was back when there were less than a 1,000 apps.

Now with over 40,000 and counting, much harder to get noticed, but those that do can see that $250,000 as being chump change and able to make that in just a few weeks.

 

Yes the app store has grown by a factor of 10x since then but the number of apps have grown by a factor of 50x so you'll have to take that into account. In truth your not competting against 50k apps since old apps are hardly ever seen/bought again but still it makes a good bullet point. Your proably competing against 100-200 active developers per genre, which isn't to different than any other market (PC/Consoles/etc..).

The key I think will be deilvering quality products with tie-ins ( ie. free social network backends, in game exclusive network adverts, cross marketing between apps, etc.. ) and keeping the cost down ofcoruse. Visiblity is the biggest issue now for indie games but there are tools comming down the pipe which will level the playingfield.

-ddn

 

Visiblity is the biggest issue now for indie games but there are tools comming down the pipe which will level the playingfield.

-ddn[/QUOTE]

Yes, there are the new publishing networks for developers, such as the Plus+ and OpenFeint, but the problem then is that once everyone adopts those they will all be on the level playing field again.

 

Well I'm definitely not a developer so I'm not an expert but it'd seem to me that the bigger developers aren't going to be implementing online multiplayer as much as the indie devs since big name devs would rather finish a project then move on to the next, online multiplayer is too much maintenance.

I mean I just can't picture EA putting out any online games, but that's just me.

 

This is true but there are always benefits for being first adopters Look at the early iPhone games, they weren't superior to the ones we have now, they just had a relatively sparse market to compete against.

My guess those networks will be saturated within 8-12 months and then they will switch to tiered marketing where people can buy premium ad space ( this is only worth it if they can guarantee you at least 1 million views ) etc..

-ddn