It's always fantastic when developers share their stories, and better when they share their revenue charts. It's not hard to find articles about how much top 10 games earn per day, or breakout successes, but while they make much better news stories they aren't the norm. I'd like to start a thread to compile data on revenue expectations for games that aren't breakaway hits (99.9999% of them). Another data point (though a moving target) that would be interesting to compile is a chart > sales ratio, ie, 'the #3,924th ranked Strategy Game makes about $2 a day'). I'll start us off with an old one - Dapple. http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2009/04/27/the-numbers-post-part-2/ [date: 2009] http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/06/spilt-milk-studios-launching-an-iphone-game/ [date: 2011] http://overpoweredgames.com/?p=203 [date: 2011] http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/08/selling-an-iphone-game-the-sales-figures-in-detail/ [date:2011] http://bartoszciechanowski.com/2011/08/portaball-post-mortem/ portaball (2010) http://www.cascadiagames.com/images/charts/cavorite_sales_ranks.png cavorite (2011) http://strayrobotgames.com/2011/08/one-month-on-the-app-store/ wooords (2011) http://www.thundergameworks.com/ranking.tgw trenches (2011)
http://www.gamesbrief.com/2011/06/spilt-milk-studios-launching-an-iphone-game/ [2011] (and wooh to another milk themed game co!)
Great Little War Game: Also from gamesbrief EDIT: Was reading some of those links. Who the hell gets half a million signees to a newsletter? OMG! We have about 1200 and there's a subscribe button in the main menu!
Thanks Paul, That's a fascinating read, and shatters some myths! There's definitely a lot to be said for word of mouth, once an app with lots of fans has achieved a certain level of saturation. Phil
I know $200 odd a month isn't that much, but if you get a few games out and they're all consistently netting that much, income could build up? Interesting read though thanks for sharing!
That one was very heartening (or whatever the opposite of disheartening is.) My favorite part of the story is able to find that extra push so far after initial release.
I'll publish sales figures about our new game is anyone is interested... I'm going to try and do different things to promote it, so can see what actually gives it a spike and what doesn't really do anything
A solid 29 sales on the first day, this promotion was done entirely by tweeting. Trailer + a lot of app review sites emailed today, so we shall see... We are also going to be featured on sticksports.com We'll see what if anything effects the number of downloads
That sounds like a push in the right direction! The only review sites that message me also want me to pay them, haha
I promised some folks I'd mention the stats of our new game DEO. Been real busy ever since launch date so I'll be sure to make a post of it later or something but did want to throw this out there: Day 1, I think we reached a little over 500 sales, ranked #140ish of all games. Day 2, reached approx. 750 sales, ranked #85ish of all games. Not much info but this will give you an idea of the kind of sales you can expect being in the lower top 100 games.