Ahh, I figured it out. In the preferences you can choose to just look at "The Big Eight" or all available. I changed it to all available and now I'm seeing Greece and Portugal too!
Glad you're having fun finally. Keep us posted on your app sales, I would be curious to see how much sales are generated just by being on the "What's Hot" list.
My sales have gone like this: Aug 27 - 5 Aug 28 - 3 Aug 29 - 2 Aug 30 - 2 Aug 31 - 1 Sept 1 - 110 (got featured, went on sale to $.99) Sept 2 - 97 And some of the sales from Aug 27 to Aug 31 were promo codes too. So being featured definitely helps. In terms of top charts for puzzle games, I'm 83 in the US, 89 in Australia, 89 in Canada, 95 in the Netherlands, 91 in Greece, and 55 in Portugal. It looks like being featured drive up my sales enough to put me on top charts, and hopefully being on top charts (and having a good game) will drive up my sales enough to bring me to the top 25 of the top charts .
Get it under 10mb so I can grab it on a whim if I feel like it. There is no reason for this game to be over. How big is it? If it's already close, that would be a shame.
I didn't know about the 10MB limit when I first submitted the game until after it got approved. The reason it's so big is because there's 5 songs (menu music, 4 gameplay songs), and I didn't compress them very much. Within like 2 days of getting approved I compressed the music and submitted an update. That was 2 weeks ago, still waiting... I'm also still waiting for Skeleton Key Lite to get approved which I submitted the same day. My sales have been slowly getting higher though anyway, and I'm #66 in US puzzle games.
Here's a graph of my sales. It's highest was 126 sales on Sept 6, and I'm afraid it might be going down now slightly. But it's still around 100 sales a day. Which is waaay better than before I got featured . The Lite version will come out soon, and hopefully my first update making it less than 10mb will also come out soon, so that should help a bunch.
Hopefully your lite version and update come out before your sales fall off too much and while you're still on the top 100 lists!
grats. these are no incredible sales, but a lot better then many other games (most of the games). you and fwish had the luck to get on the apple list. i wonder how to get on this list?! did they read TA? ok, i hope, you and fwish get enough sales so you earn something for your work. our game had zero downloads since two days. hope, this wouldn`t be the end of sales. ok, before, we just had 13 sales per day, but it`s out since 2 month, so it isn`t so bad. ehm, we really have to make the update
Yeah, I am very lucky that I was featured. Since I upgraded to iTunes 9 though, there's no trace of Skeleton Key being featured anymore. It was featured in "What's Hot" in the games category only, and the new iTunes seems to have gotten rid of that. You can never see my game in a featured list no the actual iPhone either. So... hopefully people be will be slow to upgrade .
I noticed that micah's game and fwish's game have a lot of similarities so maybe it's a certain type of game that does well with Apple staff. They're not standard puzzle games. I dont know how to describe it other than simple brain teaser games with lots of levels that get increasingly difficult. Those games seem to be a very natural fit for the platform. I haven't played Skeleton Key yet but If I'm not mistaken, it also features some iphone specific gameplay mechanics.
Shark's Treasure has no trace too then I only got 15 download yesterday total 1400+ not enough to surpport a living,but hey, been featured is a wonderful thing,the happness I got is more than the money 1.3 update will add new character mermaid, and maybe new challenge mode hope when it out, will promot the sales ps, even been featured, the best I got is 157 download a day,I know other game which been featured can go up to top 100 of game.so maybe this tape hasnot so much user? or maybe the name of the game is not attractive? should I change it? any advise?
Lite version released! I'll let you all know how this ends up effecting my sales. fwish, it looks like Shark's Treasure isn't in any of the subcategories top 100 lists (at least when I just did a MajicRank search for it), so I bet that's why the iTunes upgrade made your sales drop so much. I'm still in the top 100 lists for subcategories, but I'm slowly moving closer to 100. Now that I'm not featured in iTunes 9, if I drop off the top 100 puzzle games I'll be completely invisible in the App Store again, and probably make about 15 sales a day too. I don't know if you're planning anything like this, but I'm planning a big update soon that will add new tilesets and a plot, and I'm planning on spending a lot of time making a promotional video that's more than just a gameplay video. I hope it might help.
great news, open your iphone now,click app store,in featured, this is a hot new games, yours is in it now! guess will promot your sales very very big so happy for you
Oh yeah? Ooh that's awesome, so now you can see Skeleton Key featured straight from the iPhone! I didn't even realize there was a Hot New Games section till I saw your post, so it would have taken me a little while to notice, thanks .
shark is in 89 of adventure (no puzzle), but sames that donot much help ,featured is so important hope you can get higher
I sold 64 yesterday, which is way down. I'm blaming iTunes 9. I hope it doesn't push me off the top puzzle games chart... Open App Store, go to the Featured tab, touch Hot New Games in the New games section, and I'm at the very bottom of the Featured list.
