Hi all, I released my new game Blockees on Wednesday and was lucky enough to get a New & Noteworthy spot this Thursday. However, it's only in Germany & Austria but the game is doing really well in those countries now: Top 100 paid apps in Austria and almost there in Germany too. Has anyone had any experience getting New & Noteworthy in one of the smaller territories? If your game does well in the smaller markets are Apple more likely to feature you in the bigger ones? Blockees was also added to N&N in the puzzle games section in the UK and US but who ever looks in those really. I guess I'm just hoping to get a feature in a bigger market at some point because I've not got the money to really promote it further and I believe it's success off these features proves it's a good game. What have your experiences been?
if i recall right germany is not a "small" territory.. there is the us.. then there is long time nothing, then comes uk, germany, france if i recall right.. small is katschikistan and other former russian territories got featured in germany twice (with the same game, go figure) , got to #54 in games but did not crack the top100 overall (stuck on 112).. but i never noticed that i got featured just wondered 2 weeks later why the payout was much higher than usual then checked the sales.. so what exactly are you looking for? what kind of information? from a money perspective pretty much anything than usa is "small change" you can roughly but the factor 10 into everything you earn if you compare germany to the usa if looked at the same ranking spots.. due to the big difference in numbers its tho alot harder to reach such numbers in the us.. but thats a bit tricky since the markets have different sizes.. are for cross country featuring.. no, i think they have nothing todo with each other.. for example puzzle games are often promoted in germany because people like to buy them.. especialy for the smaller sub top100 positions, but at the end its all guessworking.. no one knows how apples territories are interconnected.. maybe every territory gets some "signal" if an app reaches a certain sales amount in one country so the other teams can take a look at consider a feature in their country..
I guess I got lucky because my last 2 games got a worldwide N&N feature for a week. However, I did NOT noticed a very big boost within that week. I sold about 10 times more copies within that timeframe but you will not end as a millionaire if you get that feature. So in my opinion it is "nice to have" and it will boost your sales and rankings for a short period - but a N&N feature is not the reason why a game will succeed (or will not). And after all the only market thar counts is the US market. Axel http://www.fancy-factory.com/ http://www.facebook.com/fancyfactorygames http://twitter.com/fancyfactory
Small in relative terms. I meant no offence. I think all the markets are small after the US. If you do not consider a 10x boost in sales a big boost we measure these things very differently. No one is talking about being a millionaire, I'm not quite sure why people always bring that up. Anyway, I was simply wondering if performance in one market could influence features in another. Despite what you think, I do believe that Apple features play a massive part in whether or not a game will succeed.
Of course a 10x boost is great - but I often read here about expections that sound to me like "...hey, I will be a millionaire after a N&N feature...". I'm absolutely sure a "bad" game will not succeed even if it gets that N&N feature. And vice versa I'm sure a "good" game will succeed even without beeing featured. Of course "good" and "bad" is relative.
I'm under no such delusions. I've had a new and noteworthy in the US before with a non game and yes it was a great boost but I had no plans to retire after. It did, however, give the app a certain reputation that I believe it still holds today where it still earns between 10-20% of what it made during the featured week each day. I'm also fortunately enough to have developer App of the Week in the UK and seen the results of that feature.
You're right about games section features. I've had more features in the action and arcade sections than I have had app sales. They don't mean much at all.
they actualy mean nothing, nada, njiente, nichts, nischta... subcategorie "feature" looks like a random thing, that happens to new releases.. being features in a couple hundred!!!! of thoose subsections worldwide is pretty common nowerdays.. at least for the titles i track.. and it means absolutly nothing for their sales, because no one goes that deep on itunes.. i would guess at least 95% of the sales of apps are being done over the device itself.. not over desktop itunes..
Everything helps. I believe it helps mostly for iPad cause the appstore is so difficult to find anything. What does everyone else think?
I believe the "new and noteworthy" section is an automated list of random "newly approved app" that receive x amount of download in a range of time, determined by Apple.. in relation to the region they are being featured... so unless it is n and n section of big market, such as USA, UK, Japan (relatively small) In my honest opinion, does not count too much for sales..
I don't believes random. It's almost certainly curated in some respect. I'm sure sales figures and rating may influence that curation. Blockees was only released the day before it appeared in N&N. It certainly hadn't done many sales in that time. Since, however, it has done very well, despite only being N&N in Germany and Austria. It currently stands at the top of the Board Games section and climbing steadily up the Top 50 paid apps. The German market may well be a lot smaller than the US and marginally smaller than the UK but I'm still doing well out of this boost. And if it's success in this market translates into other features in bigger markets then all the better.
I don't believe it is random either, although it might be as simple as basing it on ratings by reviewers in the app approval process.
no, the "real" features.. (not the autometed subcategorie ones) are handpicked by staff, blockees got n&n very shortly after release so there was no time for big user reviews or huge sales.. so faar it has 8 reviews last time i saw it and got the sales bump after it became featured.. someone liked the game and featured it.. i'm sure they at apple have some checkbox criterias the review team marks during the review process and that gets filtered down to a few individuals who choose how the "being featured" works.
