So it's been over a month since Gunman Clives release. The response have been increadibly positive and the sales have been better than I dared hope for (though still not enough to make me rich or even particularly well paid).
Here's a few of the reviews:
Eurogamer
TouchArcade
ifanzine
Pocket Gamer
Swedroid (Swedish)
I've been meaning to get started on my next game for a while now but I have trouble finding the motivation and getting into the right spirit. I did a few rendering experiments but they turned out rather crappy. After Gunman Clive I'm feeling quite some pressure to deliver another unique stylish look for my next game; and it also needs to be something production effecient and not too GPU heavy to run on weaker devices. No small feat, but I'm trying not to worry too much about it.
Showing posts with label Sales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sales. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 May 2012
Thursday, 10 November 2011
Time to move on
So over a months has passed since I released Helium Boy and I still haven't gotten started on my next game and the sales are really awful. The brief upswing I mentioned in my last post didn't last long and now it's down to just a couple of units per day. I tried having a free weekend last week and got over 50 000 downloads. It only lead to a dozen or so extra sales the day after though, and people also discovered a rather serious bug that meant it would not run on iPad for some people so I got a bunch of negative reviews. Unfourtunately I have no way of really testing the bug as everyone I know with an iPad are able to run it just fine. I've also just gotten the game to be featured in the Xperia Play Recommender which was a longer process than I had expected and I'm not sure if it will pay off. Haven't noticed any effect at all yet.
I've been meaning to make a Lite version for iOS but I just can't decide the right balance of content between the Lite and the full version; having two few levels in it will probably seem cheap, but having too many means that there's not that much extra to put in the full version, which will make it seem like a ripoff, and there's also good chance people won't finish the levels in the Lite version and won't ever need to get the Full one. Maybe I should just put everything in the Lite version and have Ads be the only difference, though I'm really not sure how effective that would be.
Apart from worrying about sales and bugs I've been trying to enjoy some time off. I've played through Catherine and put over 70 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles; might post some opinions about them sometime later. But it's really about time to get started on something new now. Don't feel very motivated though and not really keen on either of the projects I've started on right now, but I guess starting another one wouldn't be a very good idea either.
I've been meaning to make a Lite version for iOS but I just can't decide the right balance of content between the Lite and the full version; having two few levels in it will probably seem cheap, but having too many means that there's not that much extra to put in the full version, which will make it seem like a ripoff, and there's also good chance people won't finish the levels in the Lite version and won't ever need to get the Full one. Maybe I should just put everything in the Lite version and have Ads be the only difference, though I'm really not sure how effective that would be.
Apart from worrying about sales and bugs I've been trying to enjoy some time off. I've played through Catherine and put over 70 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles; might post some opinions about them sometime later. But it's really about time to get started on something new now. Don't feel very motivated though and not really keen on either of the projects I've started on right now, but I guess starting another one wouldn't be a very good idea either.
Monday, 17 October 2011
More sales talk
After my last post the sales have slowly started going up on a bit iPhone. But now I'm freaking out because I just can't figure out what caused the bump, or if I can count on it continuing.
At first it seemed like nothing I did helped at all. I joined Twitter and some retweeting group; posted a press release on prmac which got copy pasted all over the internet; the trailer got posted on gametrailers and I finally got a somewhat positive professional review. But all it did was to keep the sales at a somewhat steady 10 units a day for a while (it sold a whooping 14 units on launch day). It was only a few days later it started going up, going from 10 a day to 20 > 50 > 50 > 80 > 75.
The last bump could possibly be explained by the release of an update (though I'm not sure how that would actually affect anything, as I was mistaken in thinking updates would appear on the release list in the AppStore). I can't find anything new written about it on the internet, or even any new user reviews, and I doubt it has made any toplists or gotten featured by apple. The sales seem to be fairly evenly distributed wordwide as well.
I don't really understand how the App Store works; how do people find games outside the toplists? Is it normal to get random sales bumps? Or can I actually expect for the baseline to continue at 50-80 a day? Even though it's still not much (especially with the crazy swedish taxes) I could make a meager living if those sales continue and then hope to increase my income after a few more games, but with any less than that it seems a bit hopeless.
At first it seemed like nothing I did helped at all. I joined Twitter and some retweeting group; posted a press release on prmac which got copy pasted all over the internet; the trailer got posted on gametrailers and I finally got a somewhat positive professional review. But all it did was to keep the sales at a somewhat steady 10 units a day for a while (it sold a whooping 14 units on launch day). It was only a few days later it started going up, going from 10 a day to 20 > 50 > 50 > 80 > 75.
The last bump could possibly be explained by the release of an update (though I'm not sure how that would actually affect anything, as I was mistaken in thinking updates would appear on the release list in the AppStore). I can't find anything new written about it on the internet, or even any new user reviews, and I doubt it has made any toplists or gotten featured by apple. The sales seem to be fairly evenly distributed wordwide as well.
I don't really understand how the App Store works; how do people find games outside the toplists? Is it normal to get random sales bumps? Or can I actually expect for the baseline to continue at 50-80 a day? Even though it's still not much (especially with the crazy swedish taxes) I could make a meager living if those sales continue and then hope to increase my income after a few more games, but with any less than that it seems a bit hopeless.
Thursday, 13 October 2011
Helium BOMBA
It's been a very frustrating week. I've tried my best to pimp Helium Boy online, I've posted on a couple of forums, sent out promo codes to a bunch of review sites as well as random people to get user reviews, I've joined twitter and some indie retweet group, gotten the trailer up on GT and paid good money for a press release. But the game has still barely managed to catch up to Trouser Troubles first day sales on iPhone, despite being a considerably less crappy game, and those sales weren't exactly spectacular either.
Things have been even worse on the android side. I released a demo but it didn't spur sales at all and even the free demo has only gotten 400 downloads in four days. The new Andriod Market means I can't rely on updates to get attention anymore so I'm guessing the money I get from there will almost completely stop before long.
All in all it's starting to look a lot harder to make a living off iPhone/Android apps than I previously thought. My plan was to make a couple of games as quickly as possible until their combined sales could provide me a decent income and then possibly move on to some more ambitious stuff. But these kinds of sales makes me wonder if that's really possible and if there's much point in starting on my other projects. So I don't really know what to do. Should I keep spending all my energy on pimping my stuff and building a name for myself; should I try different business model (freemium or adds or stuff); should I give up and get a job; should I stop making small generic games and bet everything on one spectacularly ambitious project; or am I just overreacting, and I should just keep at it and hope the sales pick up with the next update.
Things have been even worse on the android side. I released a demo but it didn't spur sales at all and even the free demo has only gotten 400 downloads in four days. The new Andriod Market means I can't rely on updates to get attention anymore so I'm guessing the money I get from there will almost completely stop before long.
All in all it's starting to look a lot harder to make a living off iPhone/Android apps than I previously thought. My plan was to make a couple of games as quickly as possible until their combined sales could provide me a decent income and then possibly move on to some more ambitious stuff. But these kinds of sales makes me wonder if that's really possible and if there's much point in starting on my other projects. So I don't really know what to do. Should I keep spending all my energy on pimping my stuff and building a name for myself; should I try different business model (freemium or adds or stuff); should I give up and get a job; should I stop making small generic games and bet everything on one spectacularly ambitious project; or am I just overreacting, and I should just keep at it and hope the sales pick up with the next update.
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