This isn't true based on our dealings with them, and the simple fact they have showcased many indie games. But they can't be all things to all people. It is challenging to service the needs of themselves, the customer base, and developers all at the same time. They do, at least, make it very easy for indie developers to create and release content for their platforms, certainly relative to a lot of other platforms out there.
Despite whatever is happening here (I'm still on iOS 5) - downloads of Saturday Morning RPG were at an all time low on Thursday - on Friday downloads tripled and yesterday they grew even more. Can't be all doom and gloom if our DLs are growing.
3D Cartoon Land charted because it got press for being a terrible game and a shameless Mario ripoff. Kotaku and several other sites posted about it last week. iOS 6 won't stop he press from calling out terrible games (which then leads to purchases, oddly enough). Edit: If you remember, Pokemon Yellow also charted. Some things SHOULD cease to exist on the App Store.
I agree completely - they provide the platform, and they have certainly showcased many indie games. I just mean that they haven't set up the App Store to be fair to all app developers, they've set it up so that they can have some control (or at least influence) over it.
The new release lists have been useless for ages. They have fast turn over rates and if your app doesn't start with a number or the letter 'A' it'll show up 3 pages deep to begin with. I've seen a lot of freak-outs over the new App Store but the truth is no one but Apple knows where users look and where users tap. Devs are just guessing, and there's no way anyone has reliable data less than a week into this, with maybe 20% of users upgraded.
I'd argue that it is completely "fair" for all developers, in that all developers face the same process, opportunities and issues. It is only "unfair" in the sense that the larger capital assets of larger developers and publishers allow them to push more incentivised installs and advertising to overcome discoverability issues which isn't exactly Apple's problem nor a problem limited to just the App Store or indeed videogames. What seems to be asked for in this thread is an additional opportunity for "undiscovered" quality titles to have a better chance at success which in itself is arguably "unfair".
This is pretty serious for indies because the new interface relies on Genius, and right now Genius is only giving me apps I already have or know of, not new apps I actually might find really interesting. As one can see from the whole iOS6 Maps issue, Apple isn't very good at taking a crowdsourced approach to anything. It's used to doing it their way and have people follow them, now they need to adjust and incorporate outside noise to determine true and fair discovery, not going to happen with Apple anytime soon. Genius originally never took off because it sucked, and there's little evidence that suggests so far that it will suck any less. The removal of new is a big deal. If anything, reliance on the charts has gone even higher as your first screen is more like the Top 3 than the Top 25. It's not a great use of screen real estate either. What were they thinking?
The "New Releases"-list is very important. It is the one time chance for many developers to get a lite version or their full version into the charts. Sure, only a small percentage might have used the list but it generated enough downloads to climb into the charts and generate downloads from there.
I never played games for 20 years but them my wife got me an iPad over 2 years ago. Each and every day since them I have checked the new releases and pretty much bought something every day. Whilst I like toucharcade I wouldn't have picked up games like 'Quiet, Please' and McPixel in the week that TWEWY came out (although McPixel did get some exposure later thanks to Metalcasket). Perhaps it's change I don't like but I tries AppShapper on Thursday morning and didn't like it. Too much detail and other stuff for early in the morning. I work a 13 hour day running a business and the two restful periods of my day are checking the new releases on the App Store every morning and them having a quick scoot through the games at night. I may be doing it wrong and there may be better ways to find apps bit I really like finding them for myself and then sometimes feeling vindicates by sites like TouchArcade (like with McPixel).
I have some stats which show that it can have an impact although I don't think it is game-changing. When Plague Inc. launched, I had not done any marketing or awareness of the app - it was as silent a launch as can be. On top of that, I was on holiday and it released to the app store whilst I was asleep. Upon waking up, before I had done any promotion, I had ~300 (USA) downloads. I think it is a reasonable assumption that people found the app through the new release list - can't think of any other way! Now - I don't think the new release list fundamentally changed things - but it can accelerate things by providing a minimum, automatic level of marketing. Once I woke up, I started emailing friends, posting on facebook / toucharcade etc. Players also began to recommend it to friends and that is when the sales really started to kick off...
This. It *was* the reason. Without the new releases list, noone would have noticed and it *is* a game changer without.
My mind is still open about the changes. I release a free trial version of JiggleSaw about 2 weeks before the iOS upgrade. I was showing a friend how bad discovery was on the iPhone ie. how after only a day my app appeared on no lists on the phone. Lets face it the time in the new release lists were getting less and less. After only a few hours your already down a few pages. Post iOS 6 I found my free app on the new lists in the Australian store. This has been some good visibility and boosted downloads. This list is much slower moving. Does this mean lots of apps aren't making the list? My app didn't make the new list anywhere else in the world. Not sure why. Maybe released too early to be picked up by the new list in those other stores. If I was to release it today and my app was listed in the new list for days and days on all app stores that would be great. So as I said, not sure it's a disaster, not sure it's much better. Matthew
Agreed that the old 'new releases' list was useless for apps beginning with Z, or even 'C' I guess. But it was better than nothing. At least we can release our work to the...Well at least we can use the store as an online portfolio.
It's all easily resolved - dear apple, can we have a release date search function back on the store please?
Thanks for the thread.. As all indies we struggled with visibility on the app store before the changes - will be watching with interest.. Jill
I didn't say the new releases list was *the* reason Plague Inc did well. I said it was helpful, giving me a useful head start to spread virally. The real download growth started when I started to engage with communities and spread it through my social networks. That was enough to get it up the charts and then it grew exponentially from there.
Does anyone here have any stats as to whether the new update has affected new app releases in terms of downloads?
We released Ski Champion for free in March and got about 100K downloads the first week. I can't know for sure how many downloads came from the "Release Date" section. We didn't get featured by Apple, nor did we do any CPI campaign, but we did have some extra visibility on the App Store : - Release Date list - Game Center games - Got ~70-100 5-stars reviews on the first day, mostly from friends on the French App Store - Entered the Top25 charts after a few days I'm pretty sure most of our 100K DL originated from being in the Top25 charts, not the Release Date section. That said, the big question as we're about to submit our second game is whether being in the "Release Date" section had any play into our app entering the Top25 charts in the first place, or whether it was mostly thanks to the reviews and/or the Game Center listings. Probably a bit of everything I suppose
We're hearing a lot of mixed reactions here (though leaning towards the negative). A lot of feedback seems to be that there's less opportunity for indie developers to do well. Would love to hear people's thoughts on that. Still, I believe things will settle down and tweaks made, etc...
