I have noticed that quite a number of games are soft-launching in New Zealand first, the latest being Angry Birds Go. I was just wondering what the reasoning behind this is, and what benefits a developer can get from doing this? Does it help with getting reviews and creating a buzz? Or is it just because New Zealand is awesome?
I'm sure he knows about that He said soft launch Some games are soft launched in other regions to see if there are any issues perhaps with online play or just to test the game on a market to see the general response. If lots of players moaned about something in particular they have a chance to update it before it goes worldwide. Sorry to say but its not because NZ are 'awesome'. More like its a smaller test market which is ideal I'm hoping a lot of the comments about angry bird go are taken seriously by Rovio as they 'might' tweak how generous pickups are etc or gameplay/freemium aspects
Usually its to test multiplayer features with a larger real world sample. its also used to balanced IAP prices. developers can see what they can get away with in NZ. There is a downside that there is more chance your game will be copied as people wont want to wait. its also a bit less special when it does go world wide as everyone has already watch loads of youtube play throughs. i would only use it if i had complex multiplayer or IAP setups
It really only works for the big companies IMO. There are a lot of benefits to them some of which have mentioned. It also creates some premarketing if people are antipating the release. However if you don't have that kind of pull you might not really achieve any of those goals by doing it. Also Australia is a far better first release market than NZ.
Agree with @Destined - i think its worthwhile doing a soft launch if you're a big company or are about to launch a big / well known / highly anticipated game. If you a new indie dev for eg, i don't see much point of doing this. Cheers,
It's not only NZ but also Canada. Due to the fact, CPI in these countries are way more expensive.. Like psj3809 said, some game might test the multiplayer features. Or social heavy games can test performance of their servers. But because these market are very similar to US and Europe, but very small compared to them, these companies ultimately test retention and monetisation. Sometimes the game can stay in the test market for months (for example The Drowning from DeNA - http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/01/dena-opens-a-new-chapter-in-tablet-games-with-the-drowning/). Or sometimes the company might kill the game. Like Supercell killed 5 of their games (http://mashable.com/2013/11/13/supercell-apps-success/). Basically they are trying to tune the game up to the point where it's profitable to put loads of money for marketing and launch it to the world.
