Made over 100k on my App!

Unity Engine
,
1

How!!!

I have a question,
I am new to iPhone development and jumped into using Unity for the past few months. Thus far, i have made around 6 games (along with their free versions).

My Question:

Is it normal, that you don’t make any money at all, like maybe a purchase here and there every few days, even though the games are not bad at all…

Can you guys share your experience with us, what makes a game get so popular other than the game being really good , i mean what else do you have to do ?

Promoting through web sites, didn’t really help much…

2

catchy title :stuck_out_tongue:

3

its normal yes.
90%+ of all devs don’t even stand a chance to make in their dev costs again, making a living from games on the appstore is close to impossible without a sheer mass and cross advertisement between them if you don’t know how to get the word out about it etc (OF free for a day and alike)

4

(This is all with the caveat that as dreamora points out marketing is hugely important …)

You say your games are “not bad at all”, what’s your conversion rate like from free users?

If you as the developer don’t even think your game is “good” then why would you expect people to buy it?

Maybe you could try out some of your game ideas (as prototypes) on strangers at a local bar… if you hand the game over and the people and a reasonable percentage of people are reluctant to give it back after 5-10 minutes you are probably on to a good idea. If it doesn’t hold their attention for that long your idea (or control system, levels, etc) need work.

5

I’ve had games that made less then $100 so far.
I’ve had games that made between $1500 and $2000.
I’ve had one game that made about ten times that.
And I now have major publishers contacting me about future games, so things are starting to get interesting for me.

Just keep at it. If you work hard and improve your skills and games, you’ll get there eventually.

6

This is a nice story and some very good info, thanks.

7

I think the market is so hot in the appstore your games need to either have a great idea or be brilliantly executed… as there is so much great quality stuff coming out that anything less will quickly be passed by.

It makes it tough, but a simple concept done exceptionally well seems to be the winning formula… just look at the top titles

8

Well,

blastone,
I have been looking at the top games, simply i can tell you that my games are very nice, i am moderate kinda of a person, however i know that my games are not better than the top games, but it has a very good concept and it’s still comparable , however, to get to the top, there is something else that has to be done, there is some kind of a formula, other than making the best most cool game,
The prove to that, is that you can see stinky games, that made it all the way to the top, that tells you something , doesn’t it ?

Smag,
Your reply is awesome, not that others are not, but can you give some details , how many games did you make until you could make that 1500 - 2000 profit ?
i mean how long did it take, i am trying to find out if i am that stupid that i can’t get my games to the top fast enough , or it’s normal to go for months making games and hardly making a pay for one day meal !!!

JohnnyA,
I didn’t mean to put down my games , my games are much better than many of the top games, so how did they manage to get there, and mine didn’t , advertising , hmmmm , ask someone that trying to make a living to pay for advertising , it’s a difficult equation if i may say ! Do i have to be a juggler ?
what is your experience , you talk to you know what you are doing, what advertising worked for you ???
(by the way, i don’t do bars, plus try to get a good impression out of drunk people!)

woodn
wouldn’t you want to make a game with such a catchy title! that alone would make you good money!

i think i replied to everyone there , oh , still Samshosho , opppps , that’'s me , alright , hope to get more replies and we all get some good info here…

9

Well, it mostly depends on getting featured by Apple. My first game got featured and made about 1500 so far (these days it’s selling about 2-5 copies a day so still slowly increasing).
My next game didn’t get featured, and i don’t think it made more than 100. It’s free now.
The next one got featured again, and made a bit more than 1500.

I then decided to make some shorter games, with less content but infinite style gameplay.

So I made a quickie game in one week, which didn’t get featured and made only about 60 dollars.
The next game (made in about two weeks) was bought by a publisher (not out yet), and made a whole lot more. Still not getting rich with it, but it’s starting to become worthwhile.
I have another game ready and waiting for review.

And, just my luck, just when things were starting to look good, Apple came with their new ToS :x

10

we will see how impacting apples new tos will be.
it changed and was reformulated and it starts to sound much more like they hate 2 type of techs:

  1. flash ^^
  2. All “application generator middleware” that take code and run it within a virtual environment or map webapps to native gadgets and stuff like that (revolution, titanium and alike) which are in the end not much different from flash aside of the fact that they don’t perform like a pile of poo like 1.
11

Yeah I’m also still hopeful that things will turn out alright for Unity.

As for Flash performing like a pile of poo, I think Actionscript 3 is quite performant, it’s just the rendering engine that sucks. But stuff like BitmapData and cacheAsBitmap have slightly improved this. I have made a 2D scrolling engine once (with parallax and one mode7 layer) that ran at 40-50 fps, which isn’t so bad.

Not sure about the performance on iPhone though. I have cs5 here so I could try an export once I find the time - I believe the functionality should still be there.

12

My first iphone game made less then $20, my current (Lilracerz) is doing much much better but that took me 3 months of dev and polish, polish polish polish.

I work building flash games for a living for big clients in an agency and its all about polish, and on the iphone that stuff really shows.

Im happy to give you the standard sort of quality assurance feedback on your games if you are up for listing them that I give on all my projects (or have given to me) brutal criticism is harsh the first time, (or all times!) but it really does make a game better.

What I have learnt:
icon is VERY important
name is VERY important
marketing is 50% of the process, the game is only 50% of the process
getting featured by apple is the big win, aim for that with polished graphics, great gameplay, and good reviews.

Toucharcade forum posts mentioned on the homepage are good for 10-20 sales a day (bribe peolpe with promo codes to help keep it bumped to the foreground)

Have a good lite version that upsells well

learn and improve.

13

good roundup on the share of marketing vs actual game :slight_smile:

Also, don’t see your “bad performing” games as loses.
See them as what they are: a great way to potentially cross advertise your newest title without feeding an ad company with your little to no earned money so far.
Make bad performing games that you don’t see make any money free to attract impulse downloaders and catch their attention for your newest game that way etc

14

and I learnt very quickly that 50 promo codes are not enough!

and one more tip: Make a presspack for your game when you send it to review sites…

Heres mine for your reference (codes wont work) and I also included 5 screenshots along with it.

-------------------8<----------------------------------

Hi XXXXXX, Im sending you some details about my latest game:

Lilracerz

A polished top down arcade rally racing game featuring 17 tracks, 3 leagues, 9 unlock-able cars over
4 lush terrains, snow, desert, jungle and asphalt.

Rookie levels ease in new players, but very quickly even experienced racers will find a solid challenge,
needing tactical turbos and sharp corner cutting to win against ever smarter AI cars.

Great chiptune soundtrack throughout, stunning pixel art graphics, collectible coins, car upgrades,
jumps and squishable spectators.

Promo Codes for your review:

9LKAKAMXW9JP
P4FPKFAWHP9H

itunes Link:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lilracerz/id372283058?mt=8

ingame videos:

And some tasty screen shots are attached as well.

Having it short, punchy and all there ready I think really helped me get a lot of reviews