This Saturday I plan on submitting my iOS game to the App Store. The current plan is to release December 13th (a Thursday, assuming there are no review problems). But now I am starting to second guess that decision. There will be a lot of high profile apps and price cuts mid/late December before iTunes Connect closes, so I am starting to wonder if I should wait until January to release.
Obviously there is no right answer, but I wanted to see what the general consensus is if I should release mid-December or not. Just for background, the game is called Terminal Escape and it is a airport/travel related game, so the timing is appropriate when lots of people travel… just one more variable to account for.
Thanks for the link. My reason for releasing on a Thursday is that TouchArcade does a “coming tonight” post every Wednesday night, so it would be nice to get on that. I obviously don’t want to base the entire release day on getting mentioned in one blog post, but it is just one more factor.
In terms of releasing in December, I am still undecided. I just can’t think that it would be a good thing to miss the Christmas rush. There are always a lot of apps/games coming out, so it might not matter if there are just a little bit more than average coming out on any particular day.
Don’t release it in december. Wait until all the holiday madness is done, polish up your marketing stuff, get in touch with the people you think should know about your game.
And maybe ask around for some honest and serious crits on the forums to see if you can use the time to improve anything about the game in a reasonable month. So you can test the audience waters easily and see if people digg what you have so far. That way you can still tweak some elements in no hurry.
For example, just from looking at the website, I would suggest of having a dedicated landing page with screenshots on it. I just get a wall of text and a webplayer loading…Quite a downer if one is looking for quick visual information on the game.
I agree, the website really isn’t setup for a new release right now. I was going to work on the marketing right after I hit the submit button. I’ve gotten a good amount of feedback from touch arcade users so I feel pretty confident about the polish of the game.
From my three year old game on the App Store I’ve noticed that revenue from December is about double that in January. I’d hate to lose out on that. But I do agree that there is a better chance of getting noticed in January so in the long run it might be better. It looks like there are on average about 1,000 more games released in December than January. Arg, programming is so much easier.
Well I am sticking with the sunday release date either it will work and sustain itself or it wont. I have seen some games that were even published by chillingo die in less than 2 weeks.