I'm sorry for getting a little carried away, but you seem to simply ignore the numbers. And yes, I am right. This isn't something I've made up. From the published figures it has been calculated that Apple pays out between USD 4-6000 per app in average. Already this should tell you that the majority of Apps will not make the developer any money. If you add into this a factor of top heaviness, that the stellar sales-figures for certain apps suggests, it is blatantly obvious that the majority of developers will not be able to make a living from their App sales*. Whether this is deserved or not is another matter. From a strict market-economy point of view anyone succeeding deserves to succeed, and anyone failing deserves to fail. The market decides, fair enough. This still means that great stuff might fail, because you have to put stuff like marketing into the equation. This is obviously a place where most indies fall short as they neither have the budgets nor the know-how. *Yes, I really wanted to use CAPS LOCK for the last part of that sentence.
By definition an underated list is very hard to make. Try making one by polling people, say TA forum members for example. Unsurprisingly the game at the top of the list will be something with possibly millions of downloads that most of the voters all thought should have outsold Angry Birds. Actually, now I think about it it is a travesty that Tiny Wings has dropped down all the way to 7 already...
because I am right and you are not.. No seriously, of course good marketing is also one of the important things to do but your game has to be good on all aspects to reach the big audience - as in easy to pick up, fun to play, graphics etc. I think that a list of most OVERRATED (caps lock11!) games would be more on it's place because some games... man.. @Glenn, don't you worry about tiny wings, I'm 100% sure that guy has made over a million $$$ + angry birds will sooner of later be puked/pissed/shitted out by people if it isn't already. They are going to milk this thing to the bottom. Can't blame them really cuz they are making millions
Why try to model the App Store as if it were different from all other open markets? There is NEVER enough money flowing into ANY market to support everybody who would like to make a living in it. There isn't enough money in movies or music to support everybody who wants to make movies or music. For every movie star or rock star there are a hundred people working as grips or studio techs, and for every one of them there are a thousand film school or "Music Technology" grads who will never get a job. Noah at MikaMobile put it best: he says the App Store is a flea market. Anybody can show up with their wares, put a price on them and see how it goes. I'll go one step further (this is me talking, not Noah). Most of the sellers at a flea market are showing up with a pile of junk they dug out of their garages - stuff that has little or no value - in the belief that because other people are mkaing mopney at the flea market the buyers must be suckers. Then they complain about booth fees and gas prices when they don't get a steady stream of buyers. Just like any other market, from A-list entertainment all the way down to the rummage sale, the secret to success is this: arrive with a marketable product, make sure people know you've got it, price it fairly, and sell it as hard and as fast as you can. There's no mystery to this. Anybody with a product to sell is a capitalist, and every capitalist knows that taking a product to market is a huge risk, because there's no such thing as a market with plenty of money for everybody.
Here are some numbers from our own experiences, mixed with some other info... of course there are tons of factors to influence these (I'm sure many have had other experiences based on other country sales, etc), but its a good starting point. If you're at the top 1000 grossing [games] spot (assuming you are doing similarly in all countries, which is a huge caveat), you're making around $100-$150 a day. At the 500 spot you're making ~$400-$500/day. At the 200 spot you're making nearly $2000-$2500/day. In the top 10 grossing, you're making $30000-$50000/day . The other thing to consider is that most games do not stay nestled in the top grossing charts... they usually have a week or 2 stint there and fall back down rapidly, so you cant just take the above numbers, multiply by 5 months and say, "hey, nice income." In fact, the hardest (and most important) part imo is not charting high, but STAYING at a decent rank for a prolonged period of time. So basically, if there are 55k games in the app store, then pretty much about 90% of all games are making a few hundred bucks in a years time (i.e. basically nothing). I would estimate that about 1-2% of games are able to turn a profit, and even then it totally depends on your team size and dev time. There is still a good 5% or so of games that are making decent money though -- maybe not enough to recoup costs, but still a nice 10-20 grand per year. Anyway... those numbers don't really sway me too much, personally. Its naive for a new dev -- imo -- to think they can jump in the marketplace, release one game, call it a day and retire. Sure it CAN happen, but that shouldn't really be your "plan" going into it. The App Store is not a get rick quick scheme anymore... its a real marketplace like any other, and serious developers need to start treating it like a thing of business instead of a hobby. If devs have a long term plan and can afford the startup, there is real money to be earned in the middle ground without EVER being a huge success. And the good part is the more games you release, the more you learn, the bigger your fanbase is, the more contacts you create, the more chance you have to get a hit somewhere down the road.
Well said. And thanks for setting the example for those of us aspiring to start a real business on the App store. You guys are doing an excellent job of making and marketing your games that is both achievable and realistic for dedicated developers who have an entrepreneurial mindset.
The real big secret is to get your game to stay in the top 200 game charts and then you can make a living off the App Store. A lot of games can chart but they can fall pretty rapidly then drop off the radar to be never seen again, so really they don't get a chance to bring a steady income in. When I was involved with True Axis - Jet Car Stunts - we released that game in Nov 2009. If you look in the game charts in the US it is still in the top 200... The highest it got was 34. When it was released we immediately had plans for updating. But if you go onto App Annie and look at the history of it's position. You will see that it charted into the top 100 then dropped down very quickly. If you look at the update release dates you can see that each one improved it's standings in the chart to the point of it been stabilised and keeps it's position. Then we stopped updating the game after Sept and it has more or less held it's place. I think once a game can get established then it's pretty hard to shift it out of it's settled chart position. I have lot's of theories on how we managed that but a lot of it was very long working hours doing development (updates) and marketing, just basically keeping the game alive in the viral space. Most devs are lazy and never bother with this work ethic, sure they can make a good game but they don't want to play the marketing side or really add more into the game with updates. One of the reasons why I left True Axis was that I was totally burnt out from the work. Just pushing myself day after day just to keep a game in the charts. My body and my wife told me something had to give - so I basically cashed in. The thing is you have to ask yourself, how badly do you want that success. You may get very lucky or you may have to work your butt off to achieve your desired results. In my book, luck is luck and is worthless but working hard you can find success. So really the choice is up to the dev - if you fail then don't blame the market, think smarter learn and try again.
Reaching the top 200 games is no mean feat. (Not to mention holding on to it for a longer period of time). If your game reaches the top 200 list itÂ’s doing better than 99,5% of the games in the App Store.
