I'm wondering about the App Store marketplace. I've had wildly different experiences with the two apps released so far. PokeIndex 5th Gen sold 4000 copies last year, and continues to sell a few copies every day (was released in Jan 2012). Crystal Collapse was released Feb 28th and has only sold around 150 copies. It's barely a blip on the radar at this point, averaging less than 1 sale per day. These are different categories, of course. But I have to wonder if it's a feast or famine market. What I've seen so far from other developers who post info is that your game is either far more successful than anticipated, or dies in obscurity. Are there any developers out there that make a modest living off the App Store? How large is your library of apps? Did you have a breakout hit? It seems to me the two paths to success are to have a hit (ie get lucky) or have 10+ apps that generate enough of an audience between them to set up a feedback loop. Neither path is particularly encouraging, to be honest.
I think "feast or famine" is an apt way to describe it; I don't think it is much different than the music, book or movie industry. A few titles make it big, but most don't. My own game (Drawdle) did better than expected on Android but much worse on the App Store, so it has averaged out to "moderately successful", I suppose. The key may be, as you said, to put out as many apps on as many platforms as possible and hope one or two becomes a hit.
Ignoring stuff like personal achievement and pride, I'd define it as either making a living or providing you with enough cash to fund another game/app.
We probably sit in the middle, with no massive profits but able to pay a small team a proper industry-competitive salary. Ish. Just one major app and it's sequel has kept our company afloat for a couple of years - certainly long enough to get the next one developed. So it /can/ be sustainable but it's definitely getting harder. Having said that, without Android we'd be for shit. We actually make more money from Google Play than the App Store right now, mainly because the former is much easier to gain visibility in with something halfway decent. That's for itself and the fact that given less choice we tend to get mini features fairly often too.
We've been very fortunate in that regard, having both titles featured by both the players at some point. We did a monster sum of money for the first weeks on New and Noteworthy, but it tailed off rapidly, well before the month was out. Apple should probably consider running these things for just a week and giving more apps a go imo. (As long as they keep picking ours ) It's hard to say if that exposure itself had any longer term effect. Probably not tbh, I already can't rember what they featured last month for example. However it did stretch our bottom line a long way and things would be much bleaker without that boost, we're very grateful for it.
I've been pretty lucky as a one-man show with my game Pocket Ninjas. It's brought more then enough to keep me self-employed and doing what I love. It actually started off slow but saw a huge increase and consistent pace for the last year since going to the F2P model. Tha'ts without much exposure on blogs or other marketing. So far so good, we'll see how it goes with my next release.
The way we sidestep the problem is to do contract work. Pays the bills, lets us learn the ropes and keeps us from starving for long enough to release our own apps. Competition on the app store is stiff, after all.
I think I would fall into the category of moderately successful. My first game "Ninja Penguin Rampage" - which I programmed and created the art for probably only made me $3k since I released it with Clickgamer over 3 years ago. The publisher basically didn't do anything for this game accept have it on their website so not much help in that regard. It also is a bit amateurish in regards to art since I am programmer not illustrator. My second game "Deadlock: Online" has made me over $100k since its been out and has been downloaded (paid and unpaid) over a million times. I developed the game on my own and outsourced the art very cheaply (under $6k). I can honestly relate the success of this game directly to Crescent Moons involvement. Having their name behind the game has really kept a solid user base in the game, and still to this day it makes anywhere from $70-120 a day. Apple also featured it in the New and Noteworthy section its first week. The 3rd game I was involved with is "Free 2 Die" which has done alright since its release. It hasn't done nearly as well as Deadlock and its popularity has dropped off very significantly since its release. I was only the programmer for this game, but was involved with all of the aspects of development. Basically I have earned enough doing game development to work only part time doing freelance work and the rest of my income comes monthly from my games on the market. (and if I didn't gamble or play poker I probably wouldn't have to do freelance at all) My advice to anyone is to get someone well known behind the game (ie. Publisher) and make sure the game gets out there to news outlets and Apple. If you try to self publish a game it appears to be a huge crapshoot, with Apple reserving most of the spots on new and noteworthy, and editors choice for games submitted to them by Publishers who they have good relationships with.
one of the initiatives i like about BlackBerry 10 is that you can submit your application for certification "Built for BlackBerry". it puts your apps/games through some serious testing and if you obtain this - this is what warrants a position in the high level spots in the application world. not some private opinion or money relationship with publishers.. maybe apple could learn from this? PS: my own games do ok; but i wouldn't quit my day job just yet
Good places to look would probably be different depending on your skill set. FWIW, what we do in particular is we work with interactive agencies and make apps to specification. Our company founders put their name on the map with a free app that got some local coverage, which got their phones ringing. These agencies have lots of clients, so we tend to get more than one project from each. Your situation and market conditions will obviously vary, but maybe freelance work might open some doors. I might not be the best one to ask. Cold calling? Networking? Online freelance communities? Linkedin? Craigslist? I suspect your guess is as good as mine. Good luck.
