Hi, without doing a lot of marketing, my games sell almost only in the US... Occasionaly I have some sales from Japan, Canada or Mexico, that's it. Looks something like this: USA 97% sales JP 1% sales CA 1% sales Rest of world 1 % sales What does that say about the appstore? I guess, that big games from bigger companies have good sales in other countries (if marketed), but it looks like the rest of the world is somehow behind the curve for small games... any similar experiences? I really wonder where the US sales are coming from? I mean, the app is buried in the US appstore, but there are still people finding the games...
We see a large percentage of sales from the US, but then smaller, but not insubstantial sales from the UK, Canada, Australia and some of the larger European countries, then we get a huge long tail of odd sales here and there from other countries. Every now and again, a particular country will pick up on a game and it'll get a run of success and then settles back down again - Deluxeware Darts became popular in Germany for a few weeks, Astraware Casino has been very popular in Hong Kong and Japan, Platypus did well in France, so I'd say there are sales to be made in various countries around the world. It's worthwhile making contact with some websites specific to countries outside the US and offering them the opportunity to review your game, as that might make a difference.
I generally got some decent non-US sales with my game. It started out like 85% US, then gradually dropped to 60% US over the next several months. Last September I got a major spike in Japanese sales for some unknown reason, and around half my sales were in Japan for a few months after that. Lately it's gone back to being mostly US again. --Eric
Why would it be Strange? One can easily tell that all the iPhone & the iPod touch users are NOT a part of the any forum. They just buy it an app because they have eithr seen it on a friend's iDevice or else where...
I've always wondered, how important do you guys think it is to translate your game into additional languages? I know larger companies release different versions of the game, but was wondering if it might be something for smaller devs to invest in - do games/apps that are translated into other languages tend to sell better in those countries?
That sales spike in Japan I mentioned probably wouldn't have happened if I hadn't had the game description in iTunes translated to Japanese. The game itself doesn't have a Japanese translation though. It does have a few other languages, but I think the iTunes page being translated has more of an effect. Of course, I'm sure it depends on the game...e.g., a text-heavy adventure game would probably be more effective if it were available in multiple languages (but would of course cost more to translate). --Eric
Interesting - I've theorized that having the iTunes description would help sales, and there definitely seems to be a boost. Agree, of course, that certain games would benefit more from translation than others.
We translated our first game Bugz and iTunes description into about 10 different languages, mainly to gauge how much it helped sales... It helped in several European countries; Spain, France, Germany. Chinese, Russian, Swedish and Norwegian gave no real benefit.
Just thought I'd mention my sales spread, as it's been a bit of a suprise: 34% Germany 20% US 20% UK 7% Austria 3.5% Japan 3% Australia 12.5% Rest of the world The suprising amount of sales in Germany (and Austria), is down to having reached no.3 in the German games charts, and no.1 in Austria. I haven't got anywhere near that in other regions. I do have iTunes description translations for most regions, but just english in game. I also didn't do any special german language marketing.
Sales for Geared: United States: 51% United Kingdom: 24% France: 4% Germany: 4% Australia: 4% Canada: 3% Other: 10%
We're a pretty strange example. We have sold 27000 units of Train Conductor LTD, and 46% are from Australia. We believe that this is due to the Australian themed levels and the homegrown advantage we have here. But its interesting how drastic the difference is because typically Oz accounts for only 2-4%! 46% Australia 25% USA 7% Italy 6% Great Britain 2% France 14% Other
It is important to translate the games into other languages, because most of peoples don't speak english, for marketing reasons users would prefer using it in their own languages.
95% The Netherlands, the remainder split evenly over the rest of the world. Note that my game is localized in English, German, French, and Dutch. I'm currently expeciencing quite a boost in sales since I entered a top-10 position, but that has zero effect on sales in other stores (obviously). I also integrated OpenFeint, hoping that that would get me some exposure outside of this single market, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm not compaining as of yet, since I recently had my first 1K+ week of sales, but I'd be more comfortable if that had been the result of a more even spread over the world...
