I know some of you guys here have gotten a feature before (Glenn? ) I was just curious how long it lasts for. Its definitely helping right now during all of these gameloft/EA/Iugo sales. Otherwise we'd be plummeting. Does it last a week? 2 weeks?
One week, late Monday night to late Monday night Pacific time. Edit: Ah, you have a banner. That means you may get rotated into an icon at the end of the first week. So, maybe two weeks.
Yep, that's a banner ad, and counts as being featured too. Ah, I see you also have an icon on the Game's What's Hot list. So, a rotation may not happen, since you're already double featured. There's always a chance Apple will feature you again though, if you remain popular.
holy crap, I didn't even see that second feature - which is probably why we're so high in the top grossing still. I wonder when that went in. maybe it just went in...
As far as I know, it all happens once a week. But, with Apple, nothing is set in stone. Enjoy it while it lasts!
thanks - i gotta say its nice to get the development costs of the game paid back so I can worry about paying my bills, taxes, and credit cards. Before the game came out - we were literally on the verge of bankruptcy, and I guess we have Apple and Chillingo to thank for keeping us in business. To me it seems like we got extremely lucky with the timing of this (although if it had come out about a month before Dungeon Hunter we would have made it to the top easier) Also TA for the comments and suggestions, getting us front page for the previews, reviews, etc.. Its certainly been a wild and stressful ride for the release of this game.
I was sort of in the same boat. Had a day job, but an extremely large, and life limiting, amount of credit card debt, that would've taken ten years to pay off. Made TanZen at night for several months, for about $750. Got featured by Apple a couple weeks after release, and suddenly my debt was gone in a month. The TA users, and a mention from Arn, has kept the game going for over a year now.
amazing - yeah same deal here with credit card debt... still haven't made enough to pay that off or my taxes, but closer every day. I'm always thinking about when the sales are going to "level out" and what that level out number will be. best thing I think either of us can do is keep coming out with new stuff. and ride the train until our ticket expires...
Exactly. Just keep moving forward, and save for rainy days. Get a large user base that will buy your new stuff.
We got a "feature" in the UK and a few other countries the same day you did. Until then we'd been in "what's hot" under games (still are if you scroll...) but the effect was nothing compared to New and Noteworthy. At one point (when the game was 59p/99c) we were 4 in UK racing games and 20 in UK games. In the US, on the other hand, where we didn't get the N&N we dropped out of all charts except racing where Ground Effect is 30 and slowly sinking. To put that in perspective, when we were at 13 in racing (the peak in the US) we were calculated as being around 170 in "all games"... This has really illustrated how important being featured is and the higher we got up charts the more amazed I was by the small numbers of sales. As for profit, Ground Effect should pull me out of the further debt i'll be in when the money arrives but only just... I'll be amazed if it comes anywhere near to paying for half of it's dev costs.
this is what I fear for most indie devs - not even being able to cover development costs. its the sign of an oversaturated market. I guess the question is - whats the next viable platform after this? Droid? That will take at least a year to nurture I think.
