I’m thinking seriously about buying a pro license and hiring a code writer to make games. I’m wondering if someone might be able to tell me honestly what I might expect to gross from a decently made (nice graphics/ gameplay) game on the Iphone market. I’ve been doing some research online and it looks like the profits for different games vary wildly.
Thanks in advance.
I would say it all depends on how good is your game. Does it have a unique selling point (or something to make the reviewers want to review it). Now you have to ask what is the market “looking for”, (you are not really going to know but you can make a guess), if you are not going to give them what they want then what are you giving them something they dont want.
If you look at the top apps (angry birds, fruit ninja, cut the rope, you can kind of see what it (the market) “likes”), thats not to say that you should clone because you shouldnt very a few reasons,but gives you an idea of what the market is looking for. Why shouldnt clone a game, its pretty amoral to do (see crimson world – that blew me away to see such a blatant clone), but beyond that you are not (without spending an excessive amount time) to create a game as good as theres (in the case angry birds its been in development for a year), so forget competing directly against them ( you cant really or I wouldnt want to).
Now if you look at touch arcade and sort by views you will can see what they “like”. And if were to say what it was the “market likes” it would be a “cartoony bright and cheery comical happy go lucky” style (but thats only really a rough approximation). Minigore had over 200k views in touch arcade alone.
http://www.appannie.com/top/
Now does this mean you can just clone a game and the market will love it, no not really. You can see that the game Pirates vs ninjas vs zombies vs pandas you can see its not doing nearly as good as angry birds (because its directly competing against them) but it is still pretty good.
http://www.appannie.com/pirates-vs-ninjas-vs-zombies/ranking/history/
If you are not making a game that the market wants, it wont really matter how good it is because no one will play it. You have know what it is they want and give it to them, there is still room to make what you want so long as its within the acceptable paramaters of what it is they want. The game still has to be of sufficient quality
thanks Aiursrage, for the links and your reply. I believe your right, you can defiantly see some trends
I am often saddened by looking at the market for casual games, not only on iOS but other places as well. I have seen really well made games fail badly and some games that really seem off to me do well. Look at fart apps, they seem to sell well while very well made technically brilliant games fall into obscurity.
Look at the top grossing games in the marketplace. They seem to be very simple, fun, addictive .99C games selling at a VERY high volume, or more expensive games which have been marketed very well. The more expensive games need better marketing because they wont show up on the “Top Paid” list as easily (this list is based on quantity) and you get A LOT of impulse buys from being on this list, or featured by Apple. (Marketing doesn’t necessarily need to cost money, but reviewers need to see your games and people need to be talking about it enough to justify the risk of paying a little more than the typical app.)
Unreal have had some success with their recent offering, a more complex game at a higher price point, because A. They are very well respected and widely known and B. They got a ton of free press because of their game’s technical feats.
I tend to be drawn the the more complex ideas myself, which really doesn’t seem the be the best strategy in the iApp marketplace. It’s the ingenious little simple games that make all the $$$. Those beautifully simple ideas are just so hard to come up with…
Well, people these days want simple, amusing games. They don’t want a confusing interface, confusing quests, in an ipod game they want simple games that will give them around 15min of happiness.
As far as estimating revenue…starting a new iOS game business from “grass-roots” is a totally speculative endeavor. That being said, marketing plays a big part is how well an apps converts customers. Of all the successful iOS games/developers that I researched, the are back stories that indicate their path to success. And, it’s not just simply having a good game, it’s more about getting attention. Also the landscape is always changing, what works today (game play, Marketing, platform…) may not work tomorrow.