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Almost ready to release my game (if I'm ever finished with tweeking it) and wondered if anyone was prepared to publish sales results and what - if any - marketing was used.

Would be interesting to see results from different platforms vs what (if any) marketing was used.

I myself will be quite happy to reveal any sales details, as well as any relationships with marketing / review sites and how these affect the results.

I have been involved in the game industry in one way or another for 25 years, but this will be the first time I have developed and published a game all by myself. With a year of casual development, and some 3rd party expendeture, I would at least like to recoup my investment

Hi nz0

I have not found people to be very willing to share this type of data.

I placed an inquiry on the boards about the sales data of internationalized versions and if they were helpful or not regarding sales output.

While people were very willing to discuss the idea if they were helpful, to the best of my recollection no one shared sales data.


For my part I recently launched my first product and I had honestly expected only 2-3 people to buy it -- I have no name in the market and it was my first game self-produced (although I have worked in teams in the past to complete games) and my first time ever programming. ..

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I sold over 100 copies the first month; however much of that seems to have stemmed from being on the 'whats new' page. Now that I am no longer on that page my sales are much slower.

I have not been able to determine what my long term monthly sales are really going to look like at this point so can not comment further.

Despite what I've just said you might sell 20,000 copies, or 12. Your product is unique to you and the production quality you've put into it.


I do not look at my first product selling 100 copies as good/bad/indifferent or otherwise. Its my first product. That alone is a milestone, an accomplishment.

Having shipped an App puts me in a new playing field.. and I've just begun to explore it. I've proven to myself that success is possible.

I also know from experience -- your first effort is rarely your best.

So .. ship your app, enjoy the accomplishment. I wish you great fortune and stellar sales.

But even if it isn't .. dont give up.

Hi nzO,
I haven't sold any games yet, I am hoping to test the water with one of my next projects. I have however had Moonsnaker released as a free app on ios and android. I have put no real money into marketing it, and so far not much has panned out regarding reviews as yet. I haven't really investigated it much though. Once I have updated to the version I am tweaking at the moment, I may try a few more places out.
As far as cash goes there is not a lot to report unfortunately. I have had over 1500+ downloads on iphone but that doesn't translate to much with ad revenue so far. Android is way lower with downloads of less than 100. Although it has been put on several other android sites where I have no idea how many are downloaded.
It would be nice to know if I would have had anywhere near that amount of downloads if I had put it up for say 49p or something..
I had the fortune of winning a TGC compo for it to be published, so saved on most of the fees involved, bar the android fee. Suffice to say at my current earnings level it would take many, many years to pay back the costs involved. I do hope that will improve with a little work and a few more apps released. Time will tell.
Good luck with your app. This thread could hopefully get some good ideas on promotion of our apps! I'm sure we all could do with some ideas.

Some peoples say the marketing is the most important thing some other, also in the industry, said that is not necessary especially in iOS where is Apple to decide who win and can sell.

I made 3 games for mobile devices, 1 only for iOS and 2 for also other platforms and i can say none of them give us the result we thought but from market like Playbook and Samsung App (Bada and Android) there is 1 of the games that still sell every day.

When few months ago we had released an exclusive iOS title we spent a bit to advertise it also in some important website like TouchArcade and Pocketgamer that are, from statistics, some of the most important website for applications. The 2 banner had produced 0 clicks. Incredible because i thought can make few but i never thought a 0.

For sure a strong advertisement marketing could help but as someone said in some interview a friend in Apple can help like no others.

It also depends on how fun your game is. Let's face it; you could spend a lot of time making it and marketing it, but if it's not fun, then it will generate no buzz and word-of-mouth. There are a few games on the app store (like the game called 10000000) that were created by one or two guys and have made a killing largely because the game is fun and people are talking about it on podcasts and such.

I myself still think the key is marketing, but there's the rub; speculation and cost. There will be great games that people don't know about because they are not on "page 1" or thumbed up on a review site.

I would hope that people may know what the "cool" and "current" review sites are, what works / doesn't work and how that relates to type of game: even the branding or characterisation of it.
Perhaps the game icon could be critical to drawing interest?

The main thing is, that people share their opinions so that we and others can benefit.

Also, what benefits there are (generally) to releasing a crippled free version as well as a "full" paid version?

I know the industry slant for monetization is for in game content, but I don't really like that concept - I would like people to experience my game and think good of it - enough to pay a small amount which confirms that.

Difficult area, as I'm sure any kind of success story for an AppGameKit developed app would be plastered all over here?
Surely if you don't share the sales data (what, are you tax dodging?!) then it's only because the results are poor.

This seems to be a bit of a stumbling block for a lot of developers where they may have unrealistic expectations, whereas an over populated marketplace means your killer app remains obscure.

7RS (a freind of mine who posted earlier) sees better relative revenue returns in less populous and low profile areas than the saturated iOS platform, so it also depends on your motive: popular app/game or purely revenue driven?

What if you periodically update your game - enhance it or add more levels... does it repromote the game? So many questions...

I will post my sales results on here, assuming I get it onto an app store.

It would be useful for the AppGameKit community to pool our knowledge. An indie game developer working alone does not have access to large amounts of sales data, what works, what does not, what works within which markets.

There may be no 100% winning formula, but I think we could help each other out an try to compete with the bigger companies.

I would be really happy with 100 sales in a month for my first published game, but in the long run I'm probably going to have to become much smarter if I want this to be a full time occupation.

You could be happy for 100 units sold in a month maybe, and i say maybe, because you make the game yourself and try to cover all things alone but for a small company, always considered indie, like mine 1000 units per month do not cover our costs.

What i mean is simple, what is good for someone maybe isn't for others. To make a game, and for me make a game mean a full game with:
Intro,
Menu,
level selection
a good amount of levels
end sequence

Musics and sound effects for each different thing.
For musics i mean something unique, ordered to a professional composer not downloaded from a free and public domain website.

A decent graphics quality.
Graphics i mean made in 2d or 3d, depend on the game, by peoples who has a minimum experience on how to make something for a game not free set available for everyone in the web.

I have nothing with peoples who take gfx and musics from the web but i can't do it, when i want to make a game i want to use my gfx not something that everyone can use.

All this have a cost and for sure i can't cover for 700$ x month. 1k sold at 0.99$ (if we are selling for a fixed price) generate a revenue of 700$ a month and for sure for a single people who has the ability to create all himself is good but for us, not less than 3 peoples, is bad.

Our 1st game the 1st month after his release had a bit more than 700 units, it was the best month, the game still sell few units a day and considering it is not visible in any leaderboard or website is a good thing. The game in total after 1 and half year sold in iOS, Bada, Android(Samsung App Store), Amazon, nearly 10k units, with a revenue of less than $7k that are the money i spend in 1 and half month, maybe 2 months, to take care my company.

Honestly i don't want to sell 1k unit x day but i would like to have a decent amount to continue to create games.

I read an interview with a guy who has opened his own company, he has a very big experience in AAA games like Assassin's Creed and other similar games, he knows how to work with a team of 100 peoples but he choose to change his job and tried to build his own company. In his interview he simply said that a new game with a good marketing and if at his release is in the New And Noteworthy can have am amount of downloads of 6k the 1st day. He also said their 1st game made in 6 months about $145k with a development cost equal to a bit more of euro 100k, in 6 months he hasn't recovered the investment yet but he was happy for the 1st experience.
The euro 100k cover not only the development but also a bit of marketing, 25%, trip to GDC, E3 and other places to speak with peoples from press and website to try everything to make his game visible. He also added that the best to sell a game is to have afriend in Apple
He is a guy well integrated in the industry and with all this he has some difficulties. There are exceptions for sure, there are peoples that with a single game made millions but is not the base is just an exception.

At the moment we are making 2 games using AppGameKit and 1 has been sent to Apple for approval for Mac OSX, i don't know how many units it will sell when will be released but for sure i hope will be good.

I can share the downloads when the game will be released and i hope there will be some.

Beautiful statement...

@nz0
Get your first one done under whatever conditions you can. I promise two things, you will learn allot along the way and your next games will benefit from it greatly.

@gbison: this post isn't just for me. Like I say, I've developed or been involved in development of games for a long time. I just don't see enough shared info from here and other places which would help would be games developers to skip over early problems regarding the maximisation of exposing their game / app.

Well I'm putting up my first app on intel as a free download. I put in an advert so I'll come back and post the result with Interactive. Plus I started a google adsense account for my website so hopefully between the 2 I'll make a bit.

One question for anyone using inneractive. I put the code in but all I ever get when I took the test setting off was just that mosquito repeller ad? Does that change ever.

Auger

@Auger, yes. You tend to get more adverts as time goes on. I have seen a fair few, although the audio book one is pretty common also.