It's said that 90%+ downloads are from mobile appstore, I read it from a blog which I forgot. Is that true? Our game Robot Factory has got featured 2 weeks ago, in Games/Adventure section of Mac iTune store. However, in the past ten days, we only got 10+ avg downloads per day. So damn frustrating...
That sounds about right. There are relatively few people using iTunes to download apps, and even fewer people navigating iTunes category section. There was an AppStore bug a few months ago which caused universal apps to disappear from the iPhone AppStore. They were still visible in iTunes and on iPad AppStore. Sales of one of my affected apps dropped to almost nothing until this was corrected.
The Games/Subcategory features are automated and don't mean anything anyway. Pretty much everyone gets them if they sell a certain amount in one store. Since they're not chosen by Apple, they're not shown on the device and effectively don't matter at all.
Well, I just grumble a little. Every time you see the 'Undead apps', such as ABirds, DJump, etc. You do realize that it's toooooo hard to beat them. They know how to update frequently, spending the right money to buy Ads, and so many way to keep their position at the top list. Stop complaining, Back to work now~~~
Well, the app annie said that our new game Robot Bros got featured on iTunes puzzle category. Any is better than none. Hope it the sales will grow faster next week.
I'm convinced that if my (only) app was < 20MB then sales would at least pay for the licence to sell it in the first place. 10 sales per day is better than nothing! My next game will be free, with just a form of a "more games" button to at least get the old app's name around a little.
Good idea. The future is in free games unfortunately, as frustrating as that is to many. Virtual goods and IAPs are where it's at. After RoboHero, all our future games will be high quality F2P titles with some form of IAP. I just got off the phone with TapJoy, who of course has a vested interest in F2P games, but they said that many developers start making as much as 500x the revenue once they switch their games to free. Go figure!
i think thats a way to broad claim.. free is definatly not the future, thats silly.. free is one big chunk of the current market and will be in the future.. as will "traditional" pay once products.. the shares will shift back and forth but thats always happening. saying the future are free games is just a tad too naive. actualy creating a properly working free to play title is even more difficult than making a traditional game. i've seen many devs here struggling with it and hole monetarization departments poping up next to programming, game design, graphics dept etc. alot of devs struggle to even make a proper "simple" game.. i can't see them making appealing free to play games.. just making a game free and slapping a few iap into it does not gurantee success.. by faar.. do yourself a favour and check out the heavily battlefield called browsergames.. there are trillions of titles begging for the players attention.. a huge chaos of different titles from different devs/publishers asking for your time.. but alot of the smaller joints actualy struggles to earn money.. its not much different from indies on the appstore.. well i just got off the phone with microsofts gaming division pr manager and he said that many developers developing 360 games star making as much as 500x the revenue once they switched to the 360 platform.. *cough* see the point.. everyone wants to sell their crap.. so don't sell into pr blurbs.. its the same nonsense that people believe they will become millionaire after putting out their generic game on the appstore. there is no money rain happening.. no matter if you go free to play or not.. if you don't have a product that can compete with the best sitting up there on the ranks. as for the original post.. thats as vague as a question can be.. 90% downloads of what.. ? in global term of gam industrie people should still realize that the appstore itself is a tiny market.. not nearly as big as alot devs think it is.. during wwdc 2011 apple said they paid out 2,5 billion to devs.. during the 2010 wwdc it was 1 billion.. but what they did not say is over what timeframe.. so even asuming its over the timeframe of a year and not accumulated.. this is still small money compared to what blockbuster games on "traditional" platform earn.. for example gta4 grossed 500mil within a week after its release.. and that one big title against the complete appstore not only the games section.. now add all the big titles of the different publisher and money printing games like wow into the round and you see that iOS gaming is only a splinter of the hole market.. and people like to exaggerate the size. dfc market researcher estimates that games were a $60.4 billion business in 2009 and that it was rising, so taking a few steps back and taking a look at the hole picture puts alot of thoose numbers into perspective and show real size.. so to come back.. 90% of what exactly.. maybe you should find your source again this is surely beter than guesswork.
I believe he's saying 90% of Appstore sales are from the iOS device opposed to iTunes on a Desktop. I agree though, its rather open to interpretation but thats how I see it. I'd be really interested to know if this is true. I'm trying to keep my app below 20MB but if it is true then I guess i'll have to try harder!
The reason I plan for this next game to be free is that I can make it happen quicker than by making the old app free and making the new one paid. Plus the new app will be <20MB so in combo with being free that will maximize opportunity. I think it's important not to go with IAP due to the limitations that it places on content for most users. Personally I (solo player) will be happy with the exclusive advertising space (menu only) which a full free app will supply. In fact, as a test of the "free market" I've just made my first app free for the rest of August!
No money rain! Aw man! Yes, I'm well aware of how pr companies work. The example they gave was Online Sniper League who was making nothing then converted to free, and is now making 500x the profits. I do believe that Free To Play is currently a very attractive prospect and it's growing in leaps and bounds as far as general market acceptance goes. It hasn't peaked yet, and from looking at the metrics it seems like a very profitable area to expand into, especially if you are brand new and looking to develop a user base and IP. If I could do it over again, I would have designed RoboHero to be F2P, but it's a bit too late now, and I'm not going to just slap some IAPs onto it. We have some pretty cool titles planned for the future to test those waters. So we will see for ourselves. I'd LOVE to get some real numbers from those here who have gone free (i.e. Bug Heroes... *hint* *hint*), from what has been said about that, they did indeed increase their profits very handsomely. The proof is in the wienerschnitzel.
Randomly noticed this game today. It looks like they are spending a ton of money to chart. My guess is a good portion of the 500x is being poured back into marketing. If it works, it works. But IMO not all that is profit. 500x gross revenue maybe.
Hell, we develop games by Unity3D. The basic assets & dlls will cost us 10M+. It's hard to keep the release package below 20MB, even for a simple action game.
I've had quite a bit of experience with Unity3D, in fact I'm using it for my day job at the moment so I know the pain that you're feeling. It's one of the primary reasons that I've opted for Cocos2D for my own application because for decent sized Unity games it's virtually impossible to get them sub 20MB, particularly if they have hi-res textures for the iPhone 4 and iPad.
I think traditional price model is more suitable for games with high integrity and excellent polishment. For example you can never split up a game like Tiny Wings. And the shear quality of the game doesn't need to be free to convince user to try. Unfortunately for most developers whether due to lack of resource, talent or experience, it's not always possible to make such a high quality game with high integrity. And if you don't have resource for marketing, let your game go free is the best way to increase exposure. Browser games don't have a unified market place. So even you make a good F2P browser game, you can't make sure everyone sees it. Also the average entry level of browser game is even worse than AppStore. And there's no model like iAP there, only annoying Ads (and mostly not properly targeting). Totally agreed. And you need to start from beginning of the project when deciding a business model. The proper business model need the proper design to play along. And if you're following the traditional model you should either: 1) Spend more time on production to make your game really stand out. 2) Spend more money or effort on press release and other marketing method. In other words, there's no free lunch in the business. Do your math before you make decision on how to sell your next game.
a lenghty response got eaten by the browser... in short -whats a high integrity game? - a game needs to be polished not matter if free to play or not.. the difference of monetarization makes no difference to product quality - browsergames are as visible as games in the appstore.. you can't find jack in both.. but the browser has googles good search engine.. apple relies on wonky keywords by devs, with exactly the supposed results.. - and mictortransactions like ipa are nothing new .. they exist for quite some time on different platforms like browsergames..
