So how are people supposed to find new releases at this point? Are you pretty well screwed if Apple doesn't feature your app? My existing app sales seem to be stable but I'm pretty worried at this point about future releases.
The length of time you were featured in new releases before was pretty short... an app that started with a "P" like mine never even got placed in a position to be seen. People find out about your app through your marketing channels, word of mouth or whatever other strategy you have. If you rely on the app store (which has only been a distributor for the past few years) for your visibility I'd rethink your strategy. The very few feature spots on the front page of the app store are just as valuable as before. If you're not one of those few on page 1 it's all up to you, just as before. It's the same as it has been for some time. From my point of view, the new search is what's going to hurt more than the lack of a new releases list.
The reality is its impossible to tell if even one single download came from the "new releases" section... not saying it didn't do anything, just its impossible to tell. A lot of people use sites like Appshopper, look on these forums for new releases, etc to find games. How can anyone tell if your initial downloads came from here, or there? I personally believe the "new releases" charts were pretty worthless. Okay, there may be a very few people who browse the 100s of pages of new releases every day, but I doubt that's the norm. And lets be real, the "new releases" page was unfair anyway, being sorted alphabetically. If you're game started with an 's' you were buried 10 pages back. This may sound harsh, but I think its easy for indies to have a tendency to just want to blame something else to justify their difficulties. Hey, we do it too While I don't believe the App Store is simply "make a good game and it will succeed" (I wish it was), I certainly don't believe the end of the "new releases" section is going to add anything to our troubles Just my 2 cents
I counter that by saying do you think most people go online to view new games and apps? There is an estimated 200 million iphone and ipodtouch users ,do you see anywhere near that amount of people going online? Reality is people do no promotions yet they are in the top 200 ,how do you think those games and apps got discovered , the new releases section.
Maybe... nut other issue is bigger imo! I don't think the loss of the new releases list will make that big of a difference, regarding getting noticed. Apps was not featured on that list for very long. The changed search and how apps are displayed (one on the screen at the time) will! It takes the user a lot more time swiping trough 50 results in search now than before. That will result in less sales for indie titles. Just my 2 cents
The new App Store is so jacked I refuse to use it I'm one of the people who loved the daily ritual of browsing by 'release date'. That's how I found a lot of my favorite apps. For one reason or another many never made it to 'new and noteworthy' or 'editor's favorites'... so it was great to be able to peruse the new offerings, swap meet style. There's a world of people making incredible apps from their amazing ideas. Now in a fashion reminiscent of the old record company model, we get only what they deem worthy. F that.
The new search has definitely more impact than the new releases list. I'm not saying that the new releases list is totally useless, but nowadays people do use search a lot more than before And with the new search not searching for things correctly, well...
Just to add my 2 cents. I think the New Releases area is good to be found not only by customers, but by reviewers also. I noticed that the day I launched my first app (without doing any promotion) I got emails from reviewers or services that wanted to showcase my app. I am not sure if they found my app via New Releases or some other service, but I assumed it was via New Releases. One of those services showcased my app for free for 1 day and I got 23k downloads that day which helped my app get known. I do think a visible New Releases area is very useful. Jorge
I used to read the new games release section daily before bed. It was like reading the news. At most you have a couple hundred pop up. Which was usually 10 minutes of browsing and where most of my purchasing occurred.
My feedback mentioned above was passed on to the appropriate team. I can assure anyone that the most exposure any of my apps ever had was in the New Releases section. I would go as far as saying that for the extreme majority of unknown developers it was the only exposure. Having Your new game go under the radar has never been easier. Steam changes were bad, this is so far going the same way where only the rich get richer unfortunately.
Apple have clearly been making adjustments to the App Store and this is one thing that has improved. No longer does "word puzzle" suggest that you must surely have been looking for "bird puzzle"! In fact, right now I can't get a "did you mean" suggestion at all. Looks like they've removed that feature! How long it will last, who knows? They did - briefly - add New Releases back into categories, if you went to them through "Featured" (rather than through "Charts"). Screenshot below shows this on an iPad. Don't be fooled though... "New" is "New and Noteworthy" and is selected by Apple. The "Paid" and "Free" sections, however, were listed in review date order. All very confusing, and as I said, right now this has gone again, but it looks like they're trying out different layouts at least and hopefully taking notice of what users tap on.
The removal of the New Releases list seems pretty sad, especially for small developer teams. Previously it gave recently added apps at least a small level of visibility (and for a very limited time, of course). Also, reading the forums shows that many people used to check New Releases list rather frequently. Now they cannot do this. Obviously, we need to pay even more attention to external resources now - review sites, blogs, social networks, advertising platforms, etc... Btw users can share an app on Facebook now. Hope this helps us spread a word somehow
The "New releases" list was really a good free promotion tool, you definitely got some downloads (specially compared with Android Play in which we got zero the release day). The problem it's the rate at which the number of new daily releases is growing in iTunes, which make it unmaintainable. My last game Micko Muss feature in it only a few hours, but even thought, it got some downloads, and create some traction that lasted some days.
I'm seeing new releases for Paid and Free on both iPhone and iPad at present. The way these are described (below "New" in the "Featured" section) is terrible, but if these stay (and people realise what they are) it's actually better than iOS 5 - you can get a separate list of new releases just for free apps! https://twitter.com/lightwoodgames/status/251041203229962241/photo/1
One other thing I'm not sure if it's been mentioned but some games (especially those using openAL) have their audio break completely when you get a phone call or invoke Siri by holding down the home button. Even Jet Pack Joy Ride looses it's sound (but not music). You have to remove the app from memory and relaunch to get audio back, and I'm not sure how many casual users even know how to do that. iOS 6 has probably been Apple's most worst received update ever
actually it may not be such a bad thing for devs... since you can only see 4 icons in the main category , it's a pain to navigate ... Most people will tap on a category (ie : top free etc) and then the good old vertical scrolling is back... only WITHOUT TOP 25 LIMITATION !!! Before it was next to impossible to penetrate top 25 because of the visibility lack of visibility out of the top 25 (in the top free it may be like 50 000 dl between 25 and 26 in the US alone... now the probleme is gone
So far I've seen a pretty big positive change with my apps. I wasn't aware of the reasons first (ignorant me, didn't do all the homework on iOS 6 and all), but now I'm pretty sure Apple changes did well for my existing apps. New games may be a different story, may have to think through the whole marketing scheme well in advance this time around.
I would add that I've learned to avoid "new and noteworthy" like the plague. It seems to breakdown about 50-50 between worthwhile apps and utterly iap infested Paymium garbage, or games that are functionally broken (for example, that Chillingo matching game). I've decided that any Editor's choice is most likely style over substance (Red Trigger or Dead Trigger, my memory is shot; that Chillingo Diablo-esque game), Hell, they even list Triniti releases as New and Noteworthy. Every app-tracker I've used seems to be a day or more behind in their "new" section; I've found real gems browsing the store manually; especially in the Music section and the individual game category new releases (they move slower than just browsing "all games" - new). I started the Blood Roofs thread here after a very late sunday night stroll through the new releases. Of course, the new release section moves even faster now that updated apps get bumped up as a new release...which, IMO, provides a destructive incentive to update apps when it isn't necessary. I am, admittedly an app enthusiast, and I'm sure I represent a tiny fraction of ios device owners. However, it's also a tiny fraction that decides to buy a game such as Blood Roofs instead of the latest .99 hit or a new EA/Gameloft release.
Not too sure how disastrous the changes really are... the store was never set up to expose all that much in the first place. There's still the new and noteworthy section, but if you want to see what's come out lately aren't you able to set the listing to Release Date rather than rating? None the less... at this point getting exposed is the main issue and the solutions found are unacceptable(ie: giving things away, paying for downloads, etc.) and will continue to be that way until more segregation, more pricing oppotunity, more respect and less frugality is supported through freemium, free give aways, and insecure price changing. But tell that to anyone who's trying to tread water while cement is being poured on their head... It's rough I really think having the major devs with publishers and millions to pour into these titles should be capped at a price scale no lower than like 7-10 bucks, and segregated from the indie community. There is no way to exist as an indie when the store is so geared towards large scale onslaughts of price cutting amidst MAJOR advertising campaigns. Who else can do that but HUGE companies right? But instead of supporting the indie community, people out there instead think more egocentric towards saving their pennies and expecting more for their 1 dollar... you know... the 1 dollar that they lose over the course of a year over and over again in loose change. But nope! Rather wait til everything is free and get away with it. Sad
