Is that property available in SDK 2.2.1? I heard that it was a 3.0 feature, but honestly never followed up to check. Right now it just pops up a dialog and asks whether to play Charmed's music or to leave any currently playing iPod audio playing. I just set the attributes of the AudioSession based on which button the user clicks.
Congratulations Mindjuice for being featured, according to: http://www.topappcharts.com/326214526/app-details-charmed.php Charmed is #39 in Puzzle games now, how is that being reflected on the number of downloads, is really exponential?
Okay, we'll look into this- I think it is a very basic feature that is needed and I'm actually embarrassed that we have taken this long to get to it. Charmed is very polished and well deserving of its current boost in sales. I've been playing the lite version, but finally bought the full version last night. It is well worth it.
Sales Update Here's another update on sales:Nov. 29 - 11 copies Nov. 30 - 11 copies Dec. 1 - 66 copies (Feature started this day) Dec. 2 - 200 copies Dec. 3 - 163 copies Dec. 4 - 157 copies Dec. 5 - 191 copies Dec. 6 - 189 copies Current Chart PositionsCanada: #20 Games/Board Canada: #30 Games/Puzzle US: #25 Games/Board US: #39 Games/Puzzle I also started a Charmed Top 20 contest on the promotions forum to give away a $50 US iTunes Gift Card and $50 Canadian iTunes Gift Card.
I was just checking out the App Store's 2009 Rewind feature and then happened to pop into the Apps main page. There was Charmed's icon staring straight back at me in the New and Noteworthy category right in the top row! Checking my device showed that the Hot New Games category seems to be in transition. Charmed still shows up under the Featured and Release Date headings, but there is a whole new set of games under the Popularity heading. I think it is only a matter of hours until Charmed doesn't show up there anymore. Not sure if I got "screwed" by Apple by only being there for a week, but being in New and Noteworthy should help sales as well I hope. I am hoping that it is the push we need to break into the Top 20 (or even Top 10!) of the Puzzle Games category.
Sooooo...Charmed was featured in Hot New Games list for 1 week on the device charts, and then for 2 weeks on the New and Noteworthy list. Here is the sales chart for the last several weeks. I put Charmed on sale for $0.99 to give it the best chance of climbing the charts. Unfortunately, when sales started to drop, I made a mistake in raising the price back up too early. You can see the effect of it in the first major dip in the graph. I quickly changed the price back and things sort of recovered a bit. At first I thought this was a fatal mistake, however, seeing how things played out over the past week or so, I don't think it made that much difference in the end. After the Hot New Games feature ended, when I didn't move up any more, I assumed that we were staying in place because of our chart position. I felt that being featured in the New and Noteworthy should have pushed us up even further, but it didn't. It seemed that being visible in the charts was driving the sales to continue. Once the New and Noteworthy feature ended, however, sales dropped sharply for the next two days. So it appears that New and Noteworthy DID have an effect. Charmed has now fallen out of the Top 100 in the US Games/Puzzle category, and it shows no signs of slowing its descent. It is hanging in around #50 in the US Games/Board category, but that is falling too. I suspect I will be back around the 10-15 sales per day range soon. One thing I find very confusing in all this is how some games that are (admittedly in my opinion) very boring, unfun, ugly and much less polished than Charmed continue to maintain their ranks in the mid-30s without being featured, and without any advertising that I can tell. Any ideas?
Thanks for sharing this info! A couple of things: 1) I've read in several places (don't have my bookmarks handy right now) where there is little drop off in consumer purchases between the $1.99 and $2.99 price points. The much bigger cliff is between $.99 and $1.99. Do some research on this for your next price bump. It could mean a lot more money for you. 2) Sales momentum/inertia is huge for rankings. People see a highly ranked game and then they buy it. It's hard for games to sink. It doesn't matter if the game isn't polished or isn't the best. If it's good enough, there isn't going to be much inertia for it to go the other way. Thanks again for the info!
One thing I find very confusing in all this is how some games that are (admittedly in my opinion) very boring, unfun, ugly and much less polished than Charmed continue to maintain their ranks in the mid-30s without being featured, and without any advertising that I can tell. Any ideas? ___________ Ken , I have noticed this as well and only have one obvious explanation. That is "Search-ability" on iTunes and the device. If a game is easy to find it will remain high on the lists. A good long term position places your game on some good "What customers bought lists " as well. Being featured for a short period of time doesn't line you up with hot games. Hot games feature other games that are selling well as companions on there " What customers bought" lists as well. Search-ability is key while not being featured. Seeing an icon in the top 25 for long period of times also brings credibility to the app even if it isn't that good. The system is designed to keep apps that are selling numbers to continue doing so for longer periods of time. Could it be that simple!
It is really quite strange the sales numbers for Charmed are almost identical to the numbers we sold when Str8ts 6 x 6 was featured. Very odd! The amount of exposure = the amount of sales. That sums up the App store
Genius? Really? How so? I've never bought anything from a Genius recommendation! That may change with the new App Store layout though. I like the big new icons that they show now.
I've never bought anything from a Genius recommendation either. It tends to promote games that are higher ranked than the game it is comparing too. Gee, thanks Apple, if I wanted to buy games that were already POPULAR I'd look in the Top 100. Show me something I don't know about already. It looks like your move from $1.99 to $0.99 was a smart move. You actually made more money by selling more than double the units at the higher price point.
Looks like Charmed has leveled off at around #116 on the US Games/Puzzle charts at the moment. Maybe I shouldn't have said that! It might anger the App Store Gods if I pretend to understand how their App Store works!
I think if I had a well-publicized venue to do so right now (like appventcalendar.com was), I would try making Charmed free for a day to pickup 50,000 users for marketing purposes for future games. Anyone know about any good New Year's free game sites?
I don't know if making something free works very well for marketing another game. I've seen a few instances where this didn't work, even if the first game sold extremely well. In might work in the case of a well branded developer, like GameLoft or EA. You could always start by making Charmed XMas free, though.
I think the idea is to build up a list of users who can be directly marketed to for future games, not to market another game from within a free app. It's like building a list of semi-qualified leads (i.e. if they've acquired one of your products, they may be interested in other products you make as well).
That requires branding of the developer (EA, Gameoft) instead of the branding of the individual games. Indeed the ideal is to get a group of users that can be marketed to directly, but Apple does not provide us with the means to do so. Gathering a significant community is extremely difficult to do, even for a popular game.
I've been thinking about this lately too, and watching the charts to see how other games are doing. I checked out Enigmo 2, for example, since it was very close to Charmed in the Puzzle game charts for a while. I thought that with the HUGE success they had with Enigmo, that Enigmo 2 would be a guaranteed hit. Enigmo 2 fell out of the top 100 at almost the same time as Charmed. So even having that fan base is not a guarantee of success. Still, I would rather have it than not. I think Enigmo 2 is just far too complicated compared with Enigmo and that seems to turn off the majority of players. I've even had people tell me that the concepts involved with Charmed are too complicated for them to understand. * Swapping Charms * Rotating the device * Understanding the concept of gravity Yep...that's pretty tough!
Thats almost crazy. Charmed can be a mindless enjoyment sometimes if you aren't dead set on clearing the level. I'll play it just to play. My girlfriend was just playing Charmed while she waited for me in the car. It's one of those games you can just pick and play regardless how much time you have to waste. There are a large number of very popular games out there, and the developer is struggling to get their 2nd title noticed. There are the few that break this, like I Dig It Expeditions and Jelly Car 2, but for the vast majority of developers this doesn't happen.
