Great timing as such with Unity release and all, as its been sitting in the “contract approval” phase for 3 weeks now.
As you most likely know, the success of games in the app store are based largely around good reviews. So I do hope that you like the game enough to buy it and write a small favorable review for it.
Also - if you have any comments or anything otherwise - post away!!
We have been showing the game around at Unite the last days, and people in general seem to have liked it with the words “addictive” and “you’ve got something here”. It features unique multitouch gameplay, where you have to zap the alien UFOs by creating lightning bolts between your 2 fingers touching the screen.
I am really really interested in some stats about that. If you look at games on the store, they are priced from 0.99 (for crap) up to 9.99 for big studio premium(?) content.
Putting up a pricepoint around 1.99 for a good looking and fun game seems to be placing it in the “cheap and crap” end of the consumers quality perception.
While I will be the first to admit that we have no clue what to price the game and did an educated guess, with the recent Unity iPhone launch everyone else will be asking the same question. What is my game worth, and how can I sell a good game at “good indie quality” and earn money to live from vs. “crappy home basement I-did-this-in-an-hour work” I only need to buy a few cokes and have fun living at my parents.
At least thats what guided us to the 4.99 pricepoint + some unscientific “ask people we know would pay for this” research.
So any type of statistics would be lovely to have!! If you know wbaout it, please link for the same of all of us.
I second the pricing comment–games have fallen to $0.99 - $2.99, with very few games able to go above that (well-known brands, but that’s about it). You’ll probably make more at $0.99 or $1.99 than you would at a higher price point.
Your goal is to land somewhere in the top 50, which creates some self-sustaining momentum, and that will be a very difficult challenge at $4.99…
Pangea Software was on the iPhone at launch with very good exposure at Apple’s events (Enigmo, Cro-Mag Rally, Billy Frontier, etc). All of their games are now $0.99 and $1.99, despite launches at $9.99, which says a lot.
Many games launch with an all-caps promotional message about a limited time offer at a lower price point. You can use this tactic if you want to try a lower price but reverse the right to raise the price later. Most games that do this never raise the price, though
I agree, it’s much easier for me to toss $1.99 vs. $3.99… But I bought it anyway just to check it out… When I get a bit of extra cash I’ve got a few things I’d like to put up. I’m interested to see how everyone does within the first week or so, maybe it would be worth it for me to buy and publish now if I’d get the money back quickly.
Some other iPhone developers have mentioned that when they cut the price of their games from $3.99/4.99 down to the $1.99/2.99 range, they saw a sales increase of 10x-20x or even in a few cases, 50x, instead of 2x which would give you the same revenue.
So if you cut your price from $4.99 down to 1.99, you’d need 2.5x sales to make the same amount of revenue. Other developers’ experiences seem to indicate that you get quite a bit more than 2.5x sales when you do it. The other benefit is that more people know about your game, which helps to quicken the logarithmic nature of word-of-mouth awareness.
I don’t like valuing games lower than they should be valued. However, if you’re trying to make living and you need the revenue, you should consider it.
Based on three months of sales of my three games in the store and the forth one about to go up, I can’t ever see myself charging more than $2.99 for even a brilliant casual game. $4.99 is too much, IMHO. My next one is out at $1.99 and the Widget Monkeys are going out at $0.99. I’d really re-think $4.99. Just being really honest here.
Really appreciate your input, and it certainly helps both me/us as well as hopefully others in the same situation.
We did yesterday put the price down to 3.99 instead, and will definitely consider and talk about the price this weekend while readying press material.
So what the end result is, is that there really isnt a price difference between gimmick products and innovative and/or quality products right now in the store. There is hopefully a difference in quantity of sales and also longer term reputation once the gimmick suppliers die out / the market matures.
Yeah, the way I see it is that there simply isn’t a structured market set up yet. My theory is that sales are based largely on novelty right now (people are buying things just because they’re there), which means they’ll go down per person as the novelty wears off. Although that’ll be hard to observe when you have growing adoption of the devices.
I think over the next few months things will become a bit more organized, and you’ll start to see more recognizable tiers. However, it should be noted that there’s little precedence for this system in the mobile space, so anything could happen. Also, if tiers do emerge, they are going to be based on what the customers want. So that could mean price points between $0.99 and $3.99 instead of $0.99 and $9.99.
As I said before, I don’t like valuing games lower than they should be valued. However, in a way, I think what is happening with the App Store is freaking awesome. Because the market started as an open one, the people who actually do the work are the ones benefiting from it. That means with a few exceptions, the developers are ruling, so they can price things lower and still make the same amount of money as they would getting 30-50% from a publisher.
Pricing an iPhone game at $3.99 gives you about the same amount of money that you’d get working with a publisher to sell a PC game at retail for $20. Except in this case, your name is the only one associated with the game! That’s pretty mind blowing.
Interesting sales numbers released by the developer of Lumen BTW. Total disclosure of his sales stats per day with indication of when what happened.
I attached them here (as I cant remember where I found it on the web)
Some of the interesting things:
making it into the staff pick seems to have trippled sales for that period
he raised prices from $2 to $4 and sales went up?!?!
he later lowered price to 2 again with almost no impact on sales
there seems to be a 3 month shelf time
once your product is end of life, it didnt seem to have impact to update it anymore with new versions. Might have to do a real new release instead of updates at that point
It is naturally super hard to compare games, but it is one of the few real hard statistics that I’ve found, so wanted to share them here.
Hiya Thomas - I will purchase your game tomorrow when I get to work - I don’t even have an iPhone yet - but we are going to get kitted out and when I release my first please reciprocate ok? - lol!
I think that the general feeling with the developers I spoke to at the conference and over IRC and here on the forums is - yes it is difficult to price your work so just be flexible. If you are getting lots of sales your price is presumably good, if you are getting fewer sales your price is maybe too high so lower it in steps to see where people start to respond to it. Your game looks great fun, and nicely presented. I think that we have to set standards high, to keep prices stable. The other thing is get developing a second version asap or a second update, so your clients have a belief that the have purchased something worthwhile, rather than just throw away (which would be the $1.00 price to satisfy curiosity as the guys said at Unite 2008).
Thanks for making those stats available, keep us informed as to how well its going please, as we will be looking to start releasing some iPhone games asap and we want to get our pricing correct too! I just noticed your new price tag - that’s much better in my honest opinion
Very best regards, and good luck with your exciting venture into iPhone publishing.
Hi - will do that for sure. No reason to keep it hidden, as long as I am not the only one contributing info
Until now we have done absolutely no marketing at all, and we missed the “New” section on the app store due to the long contract setup period for the first app.
SO MAKE SURE TO SET YOUR RELEASE DATE ON YOUR FIRST APP 3 WEEKS IN THE FUTURE.
Sorry for shouting.
Either that, or release something totally small and stupid right after you get access to the iTunes Store. That way you trigger the contract setup as soon as possible.
Anyways - sales have been low as expected. Around 10 a day.
Tonight we will get the marketing going and try to get reviews up all over. Also updating the game, so that we might get another chance at the “New” category (do updated apps go there?)
Got a video up of gameplay too (thanks Richard!), so time to see what impact that has.
You are welcome (for the video). It looks good embedded in your site. Another great compliment for attending Unite… we made a promotional video for your game in between sessions.
Excellent advice regarding bank contract setup on the first game.
Thanks for that - I shall go check the video out now.
I reckon you need to do some viral stuff too - send it to people who you hope will send it to thier friends etc. So send me an email and or press release and I will forward it to my friends and lets see if that has any impact. I’m not sure who has an iTouch or iPhone but they may know people who do, I guess thats how viral marketing works.
Will draft something together during the evening and ship out. Now that the excellent little video is ready, its time to get things rolling. Will try to track statistics and where to post etc.
There is an initial list with some sites here that I will use as basis:
You will like version 1.1 then (its uploaded but not approved yet by Apple). It has a new feature where you can tap UFOs and they get scared and run away from the touch.
So you can then herd them into a killzone and away from the sheep!
