Well Ive just released Save the Monster (A new Action Puzzler!) Being a solo indie developer, Ive planned the release on a very small budget of $0! I was relying heavily to start off with to be placed at the top of the "By Release Date" under my chosen categories (Games>Puzzle; Games>Adventure). But when I went on to have a look, I was dismayed to find out Save the Monster was nowhere to be seen! instead you have to click the "show 25 more", and scroll down to the the bottom to see the app. This was a little confusing at first, as it had only just been released. But then I realized it seems to be in Alphabetical order...for some reason. Why? This seems to make no sense. There are apps released 4 days before mine, but at the top of the pile just because thet start with A or B.... .....I didnt know apple had started sorting the new releases like this. But if it carries on, I suspect we will start seeing more apps starting with A!
The algorithm that Apple uses for their placement seems like such a mess of a neural net that I don't think even Apple knows what the order at any point of time is based on. And then they keep changing it all the time. You can search for the exact title of your game and sometimes you may find your app listed on the second or third screen behind titles that don't have anything to do with what you searched for. The reason that there won't be many with As because of this is because no one thinks it will be the order used tomorrow. Hopefully, the company they bought for App discovery will completely replace this current system which in my opinion is the main reason so much gaming happens in the App Store and why the prices are so depressed.
It's been like this for a while. The reason you haven't seen a lot of games mysteriously starting with "A" is because visibility in that list is completely meaningless. Nobody browses it, and even if you're at the very top, you'll be buried in a matter of hours.
I too expected lots of devs to begin the name of their apps with the letter A, but I haven't noticed anything unusual since. I just went in search of 'Ant', but not much going on there...actually something on page 2 of that search reminded me that a certain app beginning with 'X' contains the secret we all seek!
Yup! It's why I renamed Super Awesome Land to Awesome Land... Lots of other indie devs have followed suit, naming games beginning with A or B wherever possible.
Such a terrible idea IMO. What you might gain in terms of "top billing" on a buried list for perhaps a day, you lose in general browsing being buried amongst similar sounding or named apps. You should name your game something distinctive and to the point. The first day is important, but your game has to compete on the Store for years.
Seeing as Apple is always changing their algorithm, I wouldn't develop a strategy based on something like that. Organic growth through a really great game is the only way an indie developer will have a sustainable business IMO.
It does seem like such a mess. It just makes it hard planning etc when there is no set algorithm. The last thing I heard was that the "release date" list was being ordered by the build number. Which seemed a bit stupid to me as some devs release first time with something like build 1.0.3, as these were the builds while testing/testflight/improving. Also, has anyone else noticed that with the iOS 5 software, the 3 buttons: "Top Paid", "Top Free", and "Release Date" dont even show up sometimes on the iPhone AppStore?? (not sure about iPad) And PikPok has a good point. Ive just Released Save the Monster, and I thought "Hmmm maybe I should have released it starting with 'A'" But yeh, PikPok, I guess it would just get buiried under a load of A......... same names!
AaaaaaAAaaaa! Speaking of AAaaaaAAAAA apps, there is literally an app that just came out with that exact name: http://itunes.apple.com/app/aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!/id483413214?mt=8 It's making its rounds on a lot of the review sites. I wonder if they'll be successful just based on the ridiculous name and capitalizing on that A-Z algorithm.
I get all kinds of bugs on my iPhone App Store. Sometimes the "Read Reviews" button doesn't work until I restart the app. Or it won't load.
OMG I've never noticed this before. They really are sorted by alphabet. This is just terrible, what is Apple thinking
It's been that way since *ever* Afaik releases are batched; within batches alphabetical order rules and there are weird tricks that 'used to help' ensure you actually get some visibility in new releases (sometimes I check them for the categories I like, I hope I'm not the only one ) I took this into consideration when naming my first game but at the time I was very new to this stuff and much worried about getting initial momentum/visibility. Now... well there are lots of things I did to help gaining visibility, and I find it really difficult to decide what actually helped, other than making a decent game on the same premise you did ( ~almost~ zero budget, solo ). I would worry about other ways the name is important nowadays, rather than play ascii games and release ::AAAwesomeApp:: There are things I will continue doing, like minimum spend (hundreds of $, not thousands) on advertisement (so that SOMEBODY notice we released a game).
