release in one country first

[Blackharon]

Originally Posted by Rainier

Test launching in Canada sounds like a great idea.

Are there any DISadvantages to just having a soft launch in one country?

I don't know how new and noteworthy features behave. Are they determined per country or is the app no longer considered 'new' after it's been out for a while in a different country?

[whyhellosimon]

In my experience, most mid-large developers softlaunch in Hong Kong or Canada because they are consistently low monetising territories. It is easier in these territories then to benchmark the performance of an upcoming product against other released products so as to develop possible performance trends.

For smaller developers though there is really very little need to soft launch. Unless you want to run non-simulation stress testing of server, etc...

[Blackharon]

Originally Posted by whyhellosimon

Canada because they are consistently low monetising territories.

What? I don't know about Hong Kong but Canada is approx 1/10th the US in terms of earning for most iOS companies. For Loopycube (being proud Canadians) we're sitting around 1/8th.

The reason why you'd soft launch in Canada is Canadian behaviors closely resemble the Americans, but you'd have only 10% the number of people in your server to muck things up. It has everything to do with the number of people, not the number of dollars spent.

I would assume the same rings true for Hong Kong and China (the 2nd biggest iOS market).

[AgnesDev]

What about 2 semi-soft-launches?

I heard about this "practice" a week ago, and I'm planning to launch NanoLooper in Polish App Store (I think the market is smaller than in Canada), then (e.g. v1.1) launch in Canada, and then the final one (v1.2) in larger App Stores (in the US, the UK, Germany and maybe in France).

But to be honest, I don't know if Polish gamers give more critical rather than valuable feedback... With all respect to Poles, but something is "wrong" with their mentality and very often they are against everything (especially someone's success).

Does anyone know the answer for Blackharon's question:

Originally Posted by Blackharon

I don't know how new and noteworthy features behave. Are they determined per country or is the app no longer considered 'new' after it's been out for a while in a different country?

-=Agnes=-