Just getting on new and noteworthy is a huge step that most indie developers will never reach. Iam pretty sure at least 2-3% will buy 1 or more of the iap which he should get 100,000 or more during this period since its free. If he charts he will have more downloads and more chances of people buying iap. I have yet to see apple give a game a new and noteworthy slot and the game fails. Maybe he wont be a millionare but he will be reward for his efforts in the notion of big bucks however they may be.
Getting n&n is not a step a dev can take but its choosen by apple staff. There are dozen factors that play into being choosen. And being in the list does not mean automatic success. If you believe that you are wrong. Its easy to track n&n games and see how they made it afterwards. The feature section of the appstore is quite a mess nowerdays with maze like subcategories, special event etc. Even becoming game of the week dont automatically make you rich, i know project who had this prestige spot but they are faar from even breaking even on the dev costs. I hope the guys get faar more than 100k dl because that would be lousy for a main feature thats number games can get if they go free without any advertising. Well wait a week or two and track the grossing charts and you can see how it turned out.
Congrats, you must be uber proud! It would be great to know how much of an impact on downloads and conversions this has in say a week?
Nice to hear things are going well Sounds like you've put the right amount of content in the 'before you buy the iap' part of the game. Will download and play, I might pick up some tips... We're going down the iap route too. I did a test and set Honey Tribe to free for a couple days and the results were more than enough to convince me to use the free to download model. In our case I think enough of the price drop sites must have picked up on us.
Congrats on your success! Just one question: How?! I mean, obviously Robo Hero is a great game, and that's no doubt why you're getting so many downloads. But when you were first starting out, what did you do to get traction? How do you promote a game when it's already free? My studio just released our first game, Stir Fry. It's freemium, but I'm not even concerned with making money--I just want someone to download this game and play it. It's only been on the App Store for two days, but it already seems like it's getting buried. Virtually nobody is downloading it. We spent months working on Stir Fry, and our beta testers (most of them strangers) seemed to love it, so I know it has potential. I just don't know how to get people to notice it. We even posted a thread here on TouchArcade (here, if you're interested), but it too got buried after a few responses. Am I going crazy? Suggestions anyone? Thanks in advance.
Congrats from me too . In each of our applications there is a pike the second day after the release (and update BTW), so I also assume it's something with getting in a "New" list in more stores. 6000 downloads is nice ...
Thanks for keeping us informed! Wish you all the best with your game. Keep us up to date with the figures. Maybe you can also share your tactics for getting your release promoted My game is out very soon! #Monster Thanks!
Congrats for the review in TA as well! I hope things go well so far. I'm sure everyone here will be interested in an update, if you have news since the N&N featuring and TA review. Did downloads take off?
Hey guys, sorry I've been absent from the boards recently. It's been a crazy few weeks between the game release, MacWorld, and other exciting things. Here are our rough numbers so far after being out for 15 days. They are in a word... disappointing: 81,000 downloads 300 IAPs I'm sure there are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the fact that we are new on the iOS scene and that RoboHero isn't exactly a game that appeals to everybody. Those who like RoboRally and games of careful calculated strategy love it, those who aren't fans of that genre hate it. It would also probably have improved our numbers drastically if we'd launched the game with online multiplayer already as well. But for various reasons we were unable to do so. The game could have made more if we'd just released it as a .99 app, however even if it sold 10,000 copies instead of 300 it still would have been pennies on the dollar for work we put into it. We were aiming for exposure in addition to revenue with this, so we made the choice to stick with free. Over the course of the first 2 weeks we managed to get a number of good reviews, and even TouchArcade was kind enough to take a look at our game. It's hard to say how the reviews affected the sales, we weren't able to coordinate them all to be released at once on launch day as is the common recommendation. However, not everything is bad news. Thanks to the quality RoboHero and the exposure we got from this game, we have been able to secure a number of exciting new opportunities for the near future. We are currently negotiating an exciting new contract which could end up being a very exciting next project for us! Hopefully we'll have an official announcement very soon on that. Anyway, that's our update. It's been an... interesting ride so far. No complaints here, just lessons learned and enthusiasm for what's on the horizon!
Wow, I am really surprised the conversion rate is so low and understand your disappointment, though I'm curious why it is so low. For comparison we've had 22k downloads and 300 IAPs with Froggies, makes us feel a little better but like you said it's pennies in the scheme of things. Also, would have thought N&N and the press coverage RoboHero has received would generate more than 80k downloads although we'd be glad to get anywhere near those numbers. What was your highest number of downloads in a day and how many downloads a day are you getting now? Thanks for sharing the numbers, keep at it and best of luck.
Been following your posts since you started your campaign on KickStarter. Sorry to hear that it didn't launch as well as hoped, but games can live for a long time in the App Store. Thanks for sharing all the data and posting your experiences. I've learned a lot just from following your posts.
Hello! Just wanted to say thank you for this thread! If I learned something is to never be happy too fast, because the sales are usually less awesome than what we would have wished them to be. But, 81 000 people, playing or who have played your game, is something that you should be proud of, it's something far more important than the money, because, let's not forget, that what we do, we do it for the love of video games, and developers sometimes forget that...ok money is important, without money you can't go very far... but if you remember, the first reason why you decided to go through all this...well, you should be able to get up after any falls... People who succeed are the people who don't let everything down after a failure. I see that you are one of them and wish you the best for your next projects!
+1 To that! The ones who succeed are the ones who have failed more than others, gotten back on their feet and soldiered on
Hey thanks for the heads up! I decided to give a try to Robot Hero before going to bed, and I must say that I really like it, it's very clever and fun! I am not really a strategic game kind of guy(the only game I really played in that gendra is the first Starcraft lol) but this game hooked me up with the time machine camera, the store and the comic humor. The only con I would have is that the graphics could be a little more polished. I find them pretty cool but some more details could really help to improve the visual effect! Dominic