Something we see a ton from developers is endless amounts of theorycrafting when it comes to when the right time to release your game is. I’ve heard folks suggesting to release games before events, after events, or even during events like GDC or E3. Similarly, ever since the year-end iTunes freeze started becoming a thing, other developers’ entire launch strategy has revolved around doing everything they can to cement themselves in the charts when iTunes freezes.
Odd releases in the middle of the year though? It seems like your only real concern there is not butting up against too many other great games which might push you down the iTunes featuring list- If you’re lucky enough to get featured at all. Kenny of Super Ultra Hyper posted on our forums that he plans on releasing his upcoming title, Game of Loot on the 30th. The concern here is that the 30th is also the day that Rovio recently announced that Angry Birds 2 is going to be available worldwide.
The question is, how big of a deal is this? I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t matter a whole lot, as any good game launch should have a marketing plan beyond “Get featured by Apple." If you’ve done that, other games getting released on the same day aren’t that big of a deal because, particularly in the world of mobile, everything is designed for such short sessions. If Skyrim and The Witcher 3 were released on the same day, that’d be concerning as those are both games with hundreds of hours of gameplay that can be played for days at a time. Mobile isn’t really like that. I’ll have no problem quickly alternating between Angry Birds 2, Game of Loot, and the dozens of other games that come out next week because that’s sort of what you do when you play mobile games. If Game of Loot bombs, it’ll be because it’s yet another puzzle RPG on the App Store (or at least it appears to be), not because it happens to launch on the same day as Angry Birds
What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Don’t care because you’re going to spend the next month of your life playing Angry Birds 2? Let us know in the thread in our forums.
