are your games selling?

It's been dropping pretty slowly, we're still moving about 1000-1200 a day.

 

That's what i wanted to hear Ahhh... dreams.

 

Foosball3D? when I type this in the applestore I find only EA Foodball, not your game!

http://www.apple.com/search/store/?q=foosball3d

 

Take a look at the following link:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=307445983&mt=8&uo=6

 

That's awesome! Your sales figures are an inspiration for all of us here. Thanks for posting.

I've just got my very early stage game running on my iPhone after prototyping with Unity Indie for a couple of months. Unity really is a great product!

 

Still excellent numbers PNA, you boys (and girls?) have really shown the way to do it.

Success totally deserved, and your willingness to post useful info shows your class.

 

My weather App SunGPS is on #490 in top paid apps in germany (#7 in top paid weather apps) and sells 10-25 copies a day in germany.

About 10-20 in the US Store #15-#20 weather apps, not listed in top 1000.

Seems like my app failed in 6 of the big 8 countries.
All other countries together are like 5-7 a day, even when i'm in several top 10 of national weather app rankings. In some countries I made it #1 paid weather app with a single copy


The thread had no update for a long time and I'm curious about how the games are going these days.

 

That's still nice I guess

I would be curious to know some famous apps precise yearly revenues.

 

#30 in the Entertainment list will move you around 900 units a day. In the US

 

What is the name of your app please?

 

Al Lowe's CyberJoke 3000 if I'm correct.

 

Yes that is an app of ours, but that one is not in the chart (Unfortunately, its a really strong app)

 

so... which one is it?

 

That's way off the mark, 900 a day in the US alone would chart much higher than #30 in entertainment, that's at least top 10.

BTW, since "OMG Pirates" release I've finally been able to figure out a little more behind how the charts are calculated by watching my two games positions relative to each other, and it seems to operate on an average number of sales across 4-5 days.

 

Would you mind sharing roughly how much OMG Pirates! is selling?

If anyone is interested, After being featured by Apple in the new and noteworthy section, I was selling between 80 and 120 copies a day for a while. Now I'm no longer featured, and I'm selling about 20 copies a day. Which is still a lot better than before the featuring (I was selling about 5 a day at first). Not that much, but if this goes on for a while, I might at least get my investment (macbook, ipod, unity) back with my first game, and that was what I was going for, so I can't complain.

 

Maybe the Entertainment apps are increasing in sales relative to chart position now? I've read that if you're in the top 100 overall paid, you're selling over 1500 a day. Recently, though, people who were not even in the top 100 are claiming they still sold over 1100 a day. Here's the blog entry (from the crew at taptaptap who make Voices and Convert. They're saying even if sellthrough was up to 1200 copies a day, they couldn't crack the top 100 overall. I would've like to see their category (Utilities?) ranking at that time.

Entertainment top 10 is definitely top 100 overall at this point, so that's probably over 1200 a day. It could be a stretch that #30 in Entertainment is +/- 900 a day, but it's not out of the realm of possibility, considering Entertainment is second only to Games in overal app store sales/popularity.

 

It's too early to call out a trend, but OMG is doing nicely considering its just riding on word of mouth and a little toucharcade.com coverage. The daily figures have been a bit of a rollercoaster so far due to the weekend effect, but its definitely promising (and still trending up as near as I can tell). Since release on Friday we've had 4300-ish downloads total.

I just noticed it got featured today on the "hot new games" list on the phone itself (not in itunes), however it takes a couple extra taps to see it as opposed to the new and noteworthy list. I'll know tomorrow how significant it is.

edit:
@wh00kah: I'm just going off my own numbers. Zombieville has been hovering between #50 and #100 in the top paid apps for the last 6 months, so I have a pretty good idea what each position is selling. You can be in the US top 100 with less than 500 domestic sales a day right now. Most recently Zombieville was in the mid to upper 400's on weekdays and that placed it in the 90's range. Since i see the #12 entertainment app in the 90's right now, that means that low teens in entertainment = <500 a day, and #30 in entertainment is lower still.

Of course its all relative, but I'm going by data I've collected this past week.

 

App store is extremely competitive right now with so many new releases coming out and holiday sales.
We just had an update come out, but we're still slipping in the rankings in the top grossing.
I'm just glad that we made enough to pay for doing the next version.

 

We upload our game Cosmo http://atthepalmofyourhand.com since december 1. The sales are not good at this moment. Getting notice in the appstore is something difficult.

We have send some codes for reviews but hey take like a month to see your game. Theres a review out there but it not went good. The guy seems like he didnt play the game at all only focused on the description.

We posted our game in gametrailers.com got about 5000 views. Was an exercise because our game is very casual, and the people in that site are more core gamers.

The game is 2.99 but we are thinking to low it to 0.99 like a holiday sale or something. Is this a bad idea??? does this strategy works???

We have some codes we want to give to the users of the forum, write us to info@perkatt.com.

 

Our sales have never got into 1st gear. We had some bad luck with screenshots disappearing for the App Store 3 ays after release which took 12 days to for Apple to reinstate. From conception to release another 40 TD games were also released. Initial feedback said our game was too complex, so by 1.2 we had lamed it down for the masses.

From our experience:

- iPhone Review website reviews made no difference in sales. We were lucky enough to be reviewed about 6 times.

- Releasing updates made no difference

- We advertised on 6 iPhone Review websites. Not even a blip on the sales chart. We started Ads on various dates and none made any impact on sales.

- We released a Lite version which had a small impact.

- We have just announced a Christmas Sale yesterday at 99 cents, so will see if that has any impact.

It seems (from what I have heard) being featured in the App Store New and Noteworthy has the biggest impact on sales, oh and having a unique game.

Edit: We even did a Promo Code giveaway contest on TouchArcade which created a good buzz but had no impact on sales.

- We also submitted to approx 40 review sites
- Registered and posted on most iPhone Review Forums
- Did a build up on the TouchArcade Forums two months leading up to release and then kept updating after release.

 

interesting, I will let you know if my experience differes.

 

Without a good marketing campaign, to be featured is so important ( in my opinion ) that apps can pass from a disaster( few copies sold ) to a good success ( thousands of sales ).

Is not easy to be visible today with 100.000+ apps.

 

Did your app get featured by Apple over Halloween? If so did it make big difference to sales?

 

unluckily not :wink:

but i will try to focus on quality apps and good marketing choices.

 

our game kim´s adventure is selling 5-10 units a day, the release date was wrong... "ready for sale" one week before the release, i would like to make an update and improve the d-pad controls but the programmer is busy, i need help!!

 

My breakdown is as follows:

WallZ: 1-3 a week
War3100: 1-5 a day
Zenflation: 0 a day

I'm quite suprised by Zenflation as it should appeal to a very wide audience given the style of gameplay. All I can think of is that the super saturation of the market has made it invisible to the community. Of the few people that have bought it, they have sent me notes saying how much they love it. Maybe it's just too different to get people's attention. Who knows.

 

Out of curiosity - do any of you guys market your games offline? or is it soley online marketing?

 

This thread makes a number of important points and I can see that we have some highly rated app developers, some medium developers and some bedroom developers.

I myself have just joined Chillingo, which some of you may know is a well established publisher of iPhone games, as well as some titles for PSP and WiiWare.

Firstly, the app store recognises and rewards true innovation Ravensword, but it also rewards originality iFart . If your app is quirky, imaginative, has good game play and good artwork then most of the time it will be recognised and will sell accordingly.

Secondly, there is a roughly a factor of 10 increase in sales when you make it onto a chart such as new or featured, rule of thumb not gospel. There is then another factor increase when you make it onto the top selling apps within your category. The sales within the top10 chart are exponential and very hard to gauge but roughly 1st make 50% more than 2nd which makes 50% more than 3rd and so on. What you never get from apple is the amount that has either been sold in total or the sales figures for competitive apps, so we can only give guesses based on our own findings.

Thirdly, as others have pointed out, the golden age of making 6 figures on the app store easily is gone. With 100,000 apps being spotted within your category only happens to truly high quality games.

The biggest factor that seems to affect sales is visibility of your app on the apple app store itself. This is where Chillingo comes in, we have strong relationships with Apple and we also have strong relationships with game sites. It is through utilisation of these channels that we can help, although there are no promises or guarantees that your app may become featured by Apple.

The Chillingo brand can also help to increase your sales by its own better known brand and its more captive audience. There is also chance of cross fertilisation across the brand through people seeing what apps are also published.

Many different factors increase sales and there is no hard and fast way to do it.

I hope that you have found this useful and if there are any app developers out there who have produced a high quality title that they want to reach a wider audience can contact me personally tom @ chillingo.com

It's an interesting thread and ill keep an eye on it.

Tom
Publishing Department
Chillingo

 

We just released The Infinity Project on the App Store. We sold 47 the first day, and 52 the second day. This is our first App, so we don't know what to expect over the next week or so. We have a 4 star average right now. So we think now that we have some reviews it may help sales. We also just submitted an update v1.1 to add player requested features. We also just submitted a lite version to Apple.

 

There is always the option of creating a contest for individuals who can get the highest leaderboard scores. If the reward/prize is great enough people will buy the game just for the purpose of this contest. However, this is only a short boost in sales (depending on the lenght of the contest). For example, iMouse (not sure if any of you have heard of this company before) is having a competition since Nov 13th for a 32 gb ipod. They started the competition on Nov 13 when they updated their game with a holiday theme. The contest ends on Dec 24th at 11:59 pm. I am sure that this boosted their sales a little bit. BUT 1. after being frustrated from trying really hard to beat the highest scores people get sick of the game, 2. iMouse failed to advertise this competition very well so it really only spread by word of mouth (from those that updated the game), a few websites that made a minor mention of the contest, and some people that randomly found it by searching the app store.
Contests can be a cool idea if they are well executed. But there are things to consider: 1. an appropriate reward that will attract enough attention (and not all developers have enough money to offer such big prizes) 2. after the competition is over with, people will be sick of the game and never look at it again.
iMouse is actually trying a clever little strategy though, rumor is that they are releasing a new game immediately after this competition is over. This would fix the problem of getting sick of the game because then people automatically decide to try the new one which "is new and better."
Anyway, my point is that you could always try a $25 to $50 itunes gift card type contest. But keep these pointers in mind: Advertise the contest well, In order to enter the game must have been purchased (and preferably reviewed on itunes by the contest enterers), make the contest last long enough that people get a chance to enter.
If you advertise it well enough then hopefully many people will enter and then your game can appear on the top grossing list. Hope this helps.

 

These are good points. One of the hardest things for sole developers is having a large enough audience that will listen and respond to the competition. Also, is the competition prize $50 going to bring in at least 100 more downloads?

People also aren't always driven by money, community and competition play a large role so trying to encourage and develop this is a key area of expansion.[/quote]

 

These are good points. One of the hardest things for sole developers is having a large enough audience that will listen and respond to the competition. Also, is the competition prize $50 going to bring in at least 100 more downloads?

People also aren't always driven by money, community and competition play a large role so trying to encourage and develop this is a key area of expansion.

 

Ok I undestand that this could be a "company secret" but please pleasssse tell us how can we try to have any realtion ships with apple? is it so simple to writ them a mail and waiting for response"?

with best regrads

 

In the case of Chillingo, I guess being the number one iPhone publisher for a long time was sufficient.

For an indie, it would be far more complicated if you want to start from scratch.
The best way is to produce an awesome game first, so that they will feature you.
Then I believe that trying to establish a social contact by different manners would work : mails, conferences, articles, etc ...
Basically, the more you will create something that can belong to their interest, the more it will be easy to have relations.

But I don't think an indie really needs to have such high relations. Making quality games will be sufficient for Apple to notice you and put you to the foreground.

 

This is it. Quality will be realised. I cant tell you how the relationship with apple was formed but its a continual process and as we keep producing high quality games such as Angry Birds, Ravensword or Ice Age, Apple continue to listen and promote us. It's a win win.

Chillingo offer this to developers and this is one of the positives of using a publisher. To foster this on your own for 1 or 2 games is very time consuming and probably not worth it, why not utilise a trusted source such as Chillingo?

 

Hi Tom (@ chillingo),

do you take money, or do we pay you a percentage, of the sold games, if you decide to publish us?

All the best from snowy Vienna,
Superwaugi

 

I'm not looking to make money on my game, more self satisfaction but I can see a future where hand helds will just grow exponentially. but that will be a few years, just when my game should be ready?

 

Well, after a month of Alpha Wars in App Store:

selling about 5 copies a day.
Still knocking review webpages doors to get the game reviewed. I guess one of the problems is the huge release numbers those xmas days.
I hope I will sell a bit more once reviews are online... if there are any.

wondering if it is worth to invest on web adds.

 

I would suggest:
1) polish graphics a bit (make HUD a bit more sexier, the main/player ship looks a bit too amateurish, add a better texture and improve the ship shape)
2) try to increase price to $1.99 (I bet you'll have same sales, but you'll make more, if it does not work out, drop it again)

 

My App SunGPS seems to be stable in Germany - still #6 Top paid Weather Apps resulting in 22 sales there yesterday. It seems that staying on a high position automatically keeps you up there.

But my second biggest market the USA is falling - i'm on #28 there with just 5 copies yesterday. Other countries together just 6 copies. Australia is my 3rd best market, i have sometimes 2 sales a day there

The US sales giving me an headache because I am working on a huge update for SunGPS which will make it a much more useful App and i fear this update might be useless when i fall out of visibility before. I somehow have to keep the US rank up - If someone wants to exchange sales for a nice review please contact me. :wink:

As you can see weather apps don't sell a lot. Usually one sale will dramatically raise your rank in most countries.

And the fact that updates does not bring you up in "new" anymore is a bad decision by Apple. It will hurt the quality of the Apps. It makes no sense to work on an update when your App is not in any of the Top Lists. I fear a lot of developers will start selling almost the same App with different Graphics as new.

 

I do not work for Chillingo, but almost every publisher works the same. You give a compiled binary to the publisher, they publish it under their AppStore account and collect the revenue. 1-4 times a month they write you a check based on the percentage (usually 30%-50% based on your contract). They wont gamble on your ability to pay them

The secret of a publisher like Chillingo (and others) is not their name recognition on the AppStore (maybe a very little bit as end-users dont pay too much attention to it) but the ability to push the new app to big number of people using established channels like their blog (or published game community forums), review sites and cross-promotion inside apps. That way, the new app is put in-front of a big number of eye balls and impulse purchases begin Note that publishing with Chillingo will not save a bad game.

Going with a publisher can bring good money, but sacrifices the visibility of your business name for future recognition if your game happens to be a hit.

 

Dear Tau,

thank you so much for your insight and the value information!
That our name will not be seen (important for followoing games) is really something to think of.

All the best from Vienna,
Superwaugi

 

I can chime in a bit here about Chillingo, having worked with them quite a bit in the past few months.
They are hardworking, friendly, and really care about the Apps that they publish. Even though Ravensword was a decent game on its own, Chillingo really pushed us to make it better. Toward the end of the release we were doing at least 2 interviews per day, getting apps out to reviewers and blogs, and getting the hype going.
There was a tremendous amount of work from Chillingo and ourselves to get as far as we did.
I can give this bit of advice to other developers - make your app as polished as possible. First impressions are gold. Try to get as many first impressions from beta testers as possible, to see the likes and dislikes. That greatly improved our game.
If you think you are done with your game, take it one step further. Ravensword has done really well in the first month, its hard to say if it was better or worse than we expected. Had we released one month earlier I think it would have sold more than 2x as many copies. Luckily its done well enough for us to continue and build Ravensword 2.

 

I noticed that they forced you to improve the visuals

 

For having closely followed the release evolution, I would be tempted to think think that it was more a part of the deal than a constraint

 

Actually we improved 3 things exactly after we signed with Chillingo.
1. better controls
2. Added tutorial in the beginning
3. Added tap to target

Merry Xmas everyone!

 

Josh thanks so much for your insight! And congratulations again on the success of Ravensword.

Peace,
dingo

 

I appreciate your comments, I may work on the hud, I don't think I will change the ship design though... but the price increase is planned for new year.
thank you again.

 

if your new game after 3 weeks in the AppStore is not in a New and Noteworthy section or top100 section, i think there isn't any sense in updating this app, if you do not advertise your app.
Move on, make a new app.

Everything above - IMHO.

 

I´d like to know more about which publishers are offering (how much) money in advance for (co) financing development and which take lower share percentages on the revenues.

This is surely NDA type material in many cases but that makes it difficult for me (and i imagine many others) to decide whether its actually that useful to go with a publisher and with which one if any.

I feel like unlike in the console world there´s way less a publisher for iphone can do that has real big impact on sales figures (which the developer also can´t do himself) and at the same time the development risk is way more on app developer side.

In the console world publishers´ marketing has way more tangible impact and usually publishers, next to handling the distribution side which is way more costly also come up with financing the game´s development itself at least partially if not fully.

In the iphone world when a developer finances a game dev cycle on his own he carries all the risk in case of low sales and in case of good sales both sides profit, seems very unbalanced to me.

I appreciate what good iphone publishers do to get the word out there on an app but the consensus seems to be the only thing that has tangible impact on sales on the app store in big way is getting featured by apple.

And for that either an app has to be quirky, very polished or have big marketing push behind it if not all to some degree, otherwise its pure luck or contacts.

So yeah, that said, i think a publisher would be much more useful for helping with financing the development of a more polished title, once its out there i dunno how much sales impact it really has that its released by a certain publisher.
(Again, not to talk down their effort, just based on the bottom line brought up here that getting featured by apple has more impact than any other marketing effort).