Games profitability

[brendan]

Handang Gold, yes, and no.... yes it does give you mroe sales, as they place ads on sites like pocketpc.com, compaq etc... anyhow I've found that when my ads are running (normally) about every 3-4 weeks) my return is at least double..., stats seem to indicate that about 6.5 percent of people will buy it, so advertising is the key, if you have a dud game, you may be just wasting more money...... i.e there would have to be a percentage point where the gold level would not be worth it....

-Brendan

[randall]

Well, the funny thing is that we are all competitors. Yet we are all discussing things that work/don't work. AND its in a public forum, so even Zio and Monkeystone can gain some insight.

By helping one another, the industry becomes more standardized- and thats what buyers like to see. A stable and friendly industry. Right now, buyer confidence isn't too high and they are highly skeptical. They don't want to get their hopes up only to have them dashed for the millionth time. Getting most of them to even TRY your demo is a major hurdle- I know alot of you guys can relate to that.

As for "Pocket Andy", I don't know what kind of research would be successful without an actual knowledge of how this industry works. Believe me, its not a "miniature" version of the PC industry. If it was, we would already have a marketing model to copy.

So maybe a huge risk isn't advisable for a noob.

One of the reasons this is so different is because there isn't a standard. The people who are making the big waves in PPC gaming are INDEPENDENTS. The PC industry is ruled by big publishers, big developers, big money and big marketing. We don't have that luxury- in fact there aren't that many big developers. The big developers that do exist seemed to have missed their targets by attempting pre-entry market analysis.

Zio finally seems to have found a niche by giving up on original titles and focusing on ports of older games. Thats okay I guess- I certainly don't have the money to license/port a classic title.

Some independent games just aren't worth the extra advertising. They would barely break even, or worse. However, there are loads of places to get free advertising. Our main place: get the PEOPLE to start talking about it. This requires that you have a fairly large and satisfied customer base. Sven increased his Chopper Alley base by lowering the price to $5.99.

Speedway Jam appears that it may follow that pricing AT LAUNCH. I can just tell you right now that his satisfied customer base is going to be massive. This is why I have been touting a lower pricing scheme for most games. It has far more benefits than negative side effects.

There are loads of other "free" ways to advertise.

However, one piece of advice I might add is to spread out your marketing and ANALYZE it. Don't throw all your marketing into the first week. Because what happens the following week and the following month?

Your marketing budget is exhausted and you have no idea what attributed to your jump in sales. It could have been the banners, or the thread at Brighthand, or the featured spot at Handango, or the initial launch...

So how can you duplicate it again? Just keep track of your sales on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Try to figure out what caused a sudden leap in sales when you didn't even advertise. Maybe there was a sudden topic that was talking about "the best tetris clone" and your game was mentioned.

All I gotta say is Simon (Xen Games) picked the perfect time to test a lower price scheme for Strategic Assault- one month before the arrival of AG. If he had waited and dropped his prices now, it would be more of a "response to AG" and wouldn't return the same accurate information.

Just pay attention.

[Applewood]

[Conan]

[Applewood]

[Dave Johnston]

[Applewood]

[Chris Edwards]

[ChezDoodles]

[Applewood]

Chris: Thanks for that - I'll get back to you nearer the time. This sounds great

Sven: Hi mate, fancy meeting you here

[randall]

[Applewood]

Glad to hear someone else things that Zio's publicity might actually help mine, assuming of course I can get favourable comparisons

Agreed on these car games too. Speedway Jam is gonna kick so much ass. It looks so good that lots of people who don't even like car games will buy it, just to show their mates what their widget can do. Roll over palm pilot..

[fzammetti]

I've been selling a very crappy little game called Eliminator for about six months (well, admitting it's crappy probably doesn't help sales, but I digress)...

I can tell you that over that six month period, I sold it for $9.95 the first three months and since it's been dropped to $6.50. I've made over $1,000 on it, which isn't a lot, but considering the price point (those prices are before Handango and Pocketgear get their cuts even) and the fact that it's essentially a lousy game, that's not bad I figure.

But none of that is my point! My point is this: I saw a very large surge in sales over the past two months because the game was reviewed (and rather favorably in fact!) by PocketPC Magazine (unsolicited by me I should note). It seems to me that one of the goals of every game developer should be a review by that magazine since I can say for sure it had a very tangible and sizeable effect on my sales.

And in more general terms, I suspect that more people read traditional print publications still than look at web sites, even the popular ones like PocketGamer, so maybe that's something to consider for us all.

I am currently hard at work on two games to be released during the 3rd and 4th quarter of this year and I fully intend to test this theory. In addition, because the other individual I am partnering with on these games has a background in advertising, we have a very nice strategy that has begun even now, at least two months before the first game is complete. I'll let you all how it works by the end of the year (I don't mind sharing any "secrets" on this topic because the things we do, if successful, we can always do again, it's not like anyone gains a competitive advantage knowing how someone else succeeded!)

I only do this part-time, and I don't believe I will ever do it full-time, but I have a simple strategy that I don't think is rocket science that keeps me going: if the game is fun to play, whether it has Halo-level graphics or not, whether the sound is something out of a Star Wars movie or not, it will most likely do well because people play game to... wait for it... be entertained! If a game isn't fun to many people, nothing else will matter. That seems obvious, but so many developers seem to forget that simple truth (it's a truth to me anyway). I suspect that if more of your games are fun than are not, you probably can do it full-time, everything else will likely fall into place.