I'm a new indi developer and have a few games coming out soon, I released two recently but have only just started to actively market them. I'll happily post data on sales once it gets going so you can see how it goes if you like I'm also tracking everything I do relating to marketing in detail to see how it affects sales so I can build a nice report for the other indi developers on here so everyone can see what worked for me and what did not. For this to work I'm going to try quite a few different things, including price changes, lite versions, free versions etc, being new to this I dont really want to pay for marketing yet so that will come last I'll post more when I have more info for you my friends Happy new year! Kind Regards, Kim.
thanks! i would love to see some data on this once it is compiled! i am very interested one thing i have heard however, that paying for advertising on app websites is not worth it... im not talking about toucharcade, cuz i know tons of ppl come here, im talking bout others, (ie, slidetoplay, theappera, etc) ~star
App store is still very reasonable for indie developers. As an indie, you'll probably have more success on the App Store than most other platforms. Most of us aren't going to quit our day job any time, but the money is still great for the amount of time I've put in. I've released two small, cheap games and made about $2000 so far, working in my free time, after work. It's fun for the money, as a hobby, and as resume material.
Being one of the indie developers of "Hi, How Are You" (HHAY), I agree with you and think our game sort of falls into 1. HHAY is usually very well received by people (see the iTunes reviews/ratings) and it also has some really good press (when it was first released it got a great story in Touch Arcade, got mentioned twice in the New York Times, and even featured by Apple under "Hot New Games" !). But alas, it has not been a financial success by a long way so far. Since its release (end of September) we've had about 17,000 downloads so far which may not sound too shabby, but considering it took over 8 months to create, do the math and you can see that overall it’s an extra bit of income and there’s no way we could quit our day jobs. It has been a great experience so far though, and we have learnt a lot about the app store. For example, we made it into the top US paid app #50 for 1 day in early October when we sold 2,500 copies that day (which happened to be the day we were mentioned in the New York Times). Then sales pretty much halved every day and a week or two later we were out of all charts. Now to even make it onto a chart such as Games->Category->Kids you need to sell at least 160 copies per day. So with there being around 130,000 apps in the store, this tells you that most of the apps (which are not in any chart) are not selling many copies per day. Another formula you could go by is the number of ratings to get an idea of how many copies of an app have been sold (although this could vary a lot since I can only go by our experience). With 17,000 downloads we have 524 ratings which is about 3% of people who buy the game actually rate it. As an indie developer, what I’ve taken away from this experience is that unless you get your game in at least the top 50 paid US chart for a prolonged period of time, it’s not going to make enough money to break even, especially if there are multiple people on the project and you’ve paid for PR (like we did). I hope some of these numbers put things into perspective for people who are thinking about creating an iPhone app (i.e. don’t quit your day job just yet ). cheers, -Steve.
Doodle Jump? Pfft I bet Pocket God has made more bank than them. [Its been out longer, I'm just saying]
Secret Exit is a company of five full-time game developers (with some part-timers also involved), earning our wages from the games we make. "Serious indies", so to speak. We've released three games into the App Store so far: SPiN, released in Oct 2008, has made back ~40% of its development costs Zen Bound, released in Feb 2009, has made has back 5X its development costs Stair Dismount, released in Dec 2009, has made back ~20% of its development costs Without Zen Bound, we would not be developing games anymore. It is very risky to work solely on the iPhone as a full-time indie. Success comes only with a hit that makes it up to top 25, and getting there is a game of chance where the quality of the game itself is a surprisingly small factor.
i think is all depend on the creativity of the games within the same genre. as more similar games enter the market, gamers tend to be careful of what they buy. until today there is no similar game feature in the appstore where gamers can get to the indie games. everyone is based on top sales. if 1 day it can have better rating system, more indie games have more chance to reach the bigger market.
thought instead have ONE top 20. why not have a top 20 for every genre games. this will definitely boost the games and help reach more people
There will need to be a thining of the herd. The ones who are dedicated will need to wait this out. I saw something like this in my neighborhood. Where, it was profitable for 2 liquor stores last year, we now have 5. Now none of them are turning much profit and some of them will be closed next year.
Each subcategory has its own top 100 complete with free and paid listings. For instance- http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewTop?genreId=7006&id=26391&popId=30
It doesn't work like that. The only top lists that really matter are Top Apps and Top Games. The genre-specific top lists are only indirect results of selling more on the big charts. Only a fraction of App Store users care about searching for games by genre - the vast majority simply pick the most interesting thing on the Top 25.
I think it's really sad when a developer like Secret Exit who has put out such top quality stuff struggles to turn a profit. I think the biggest problem is the sheer number of apps there are. As cool as it is that any joe somebody can code up their idea and get it on the app store, it's also created more crap than good stuff IMO. Coupled with the ability to drop prices on the fly, and the race to the bottom trend, it's very hard to get any game noticed let alone sell it for any kind of decent price. Only the hardcore, like most the people who visit TA, can keep up with all the games that come out. And it's still impossible to try out every one. We are in the minority anyway. The vast majority are people, like Frand says, who just download stuff from the top lists because it's easy and right in front of their face. I wish Apple had a more discerning interest in what they let be sold on the app store. Or like linuslim mentions, have some sort of rating system that works really well as a way to raise the visibility of the quality stuff. There's just too many apps right now, and it gets worse everyday. Apple throws the number of available apps in the store around like a feather in it's cap, but I think it's overkill and is destroying how amazing a place it could be.
BOARDUMB, I completely agree. It sucks watching this unfold. I can only hope quality developers do not get discouraged, as I do not believe this will continue indefinitely.
I agree with u. With so much of the same genres of games in the app store (look at tower defense for example), the prices of the apps drop so much just to compete with other similar games, regardless of differentiating quality. The fact is, the people of the app store have become greedy and want everything for as cheap as possible. Even though, let's say, geodefense is better than 7 cities, if 7 cities is even $1 cheaper, the average consumer would be more interested. No other console has this problem because it isn't as easy to develop on any other console. With less developers, there aren't as many of the same kind of games competing with eachother and driving down the price. If apple becomes pickier with approving apps, only approving the better ones, prices will rise exponentially with less of the same stuff on the app store. I don't think that would go down very well with the people of that app store who want everything for $1, or want a promocode for something. It's crazy what some tA'ers will do for a promocode!
Starmonkey, I have heard more than a few describe the app store customers as greedy or cheap. In their defence, a large amount of these developers are not known quantities. It may not be reasonable to expect more than a dollar for a lot of these unknown commodities. This scenario doesn't exist to the same extent on consoles. It will take time for serious developers to establish the level of trust between their customers to get a higher return on their products.
Developers spent countless hours making games. although not all might me top notch, I have to disagree with you,as I wouldn't say that 1 or 2 dollars is overpriced I don't think it has anything to do with trust. People can see reviews, watch gameplay videos and make decisions for themselves whether or not they want to purchase a game. They don't need to "get to know" developers before they purchase a game from them. Just because any one consumer trust a developing company, let's say secret exit in this case, doesn't mean that one consumer will pay more $ for their game, it just means they will purchase it sooner with more security that it will be good quality.the bottom line is that there are so many "other" games in the app store that people can settle with instead of forking up a few extra dollars to get better quality. I have plenty of friends that will show off games to me and say "look at this free puzzle game that I got today where you try to wrap the rope around the object, covering as much as possible", when I know I paid for a similar game of better quality. Cheapos will settle for a less quality game If it costs less.
I hear what your saying starmonkey. I'm just thinking back to early squaresoft days. Once they put out that first FFF game they were able to keep producing them and charge top dollar because they had become known certain depth in their games. KOEI has a similar story and I willingly shelled out 10 bucks for that RTK Touch pile of crap. Why? They were known for a certain standard of game. They didn't produce and now they are going to have to do more than slap a name on a floater to get my next ten. Trust in the developer is huge if they want a higher rate of return.
I believe some do, but most don't. The ones that do though, didn't know ahead of time that they were going to be hugely successful. Games like Trism, Dizzy Bee, and Fieldrunners. These are all games released early on and they were successful because at the time it seemed like most iphone developers didn't hire artists and these guys went the extra mile to make them polished stand out from the app store. There are other titles too like Flight control who updated their games with free content to preserve the game on the top 25 list. I think most apps that come out though probably are probably quickly forgotten in the huge sea of other apps. I'm also noticing how a few developers try to be arrogant and list in the game description on how it's going to be the next big thing and I don't support those apps. I just don't like arrogant people
