Iphone Information
by Christopher Evans · in iTorque 2D · 07/22/2009 (8:47 am) · 10 replies
We are having an Utah indie game night the 30th of this month and I will be doing a presentation about iPhone development. My main goal for this presentation is to separate fact from fiction. We hear all about the people who made hundred of thousands of dollars, and very little about those who only sold 35 (My application called "The Sleeper"). For this presentation I want to talk about what are the realistic returns when making an iphone game.
So what I am asking for is information from those who have published application, be it a game or a not. If you do this I will advertise your game, during the presentation. Granted there not a lot of people at this event; between 15 to 45 people. But I figure you might get some more sales because of it.
If you do help I would like an image of your game and logo so I can display it in my presentation.
Thanks.
So what I am asking for is information from those who have published application, be it a game or a not. If you do this I will advertise your game, during the presentation. Granted there not a lot of people at this event; between 15 to 45 people. But I figure you might get some more sales because of it.
If you do help I would like an image of your game and logo so I can display it in my presentation.
Thanks.
#2
I'd be happy to share my story right here.
My first submission to the App Store wasn't a game, it was a tip calculator called Tipster. I blindly purchased an iPhone Developer's license the moment it was available, but I had zero knowledge and experience in Objective-C, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), and even using Xcode. I did some reading at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore, but felt incredibly frustrated with Objective-C's syntax and how generally convoluted the code was to perform a simple task. I basically did a crash course on the July 4th holiday weekend last year and submitted it right before the deadline when the App Store was due to open.
For some odd reason, it took three weeks for my app to get approved, and by then, there were approximately 30 other tip calculators out there, ranging from free to $2.99. Perhaps they were inundated with tip calculators, or they were just inundated with app submissions. Only God and Steve Jobs know who's running the show over there, and how it's being run when it comes to approving apps, even to this day. Back then, no one knew what other applications were going to be out there, so I thought I was going to make a killing coming up with something cheap and unique - boy, was I wrong.
Fast forward one year from now, and with over 150 tip calculators in the App Store (yes, I checked), my program still manages to sell on the average of 5-15 sales per day all over the world. So, I'm not a millionaire or hundred-thousand-aire, but it's like getting a free lunch everyday. I fell off my chair early this year as my sales skyrocketed to over 2600 in February, and 1600 more in March!
Now, if you create an app or game that is truly unique and/or exciting to play or use, your results can vary greatly. If I can still average a dozen sales every day with a tip calculator when there is so much competition, you might be able to imagine what the sales could be like. Remember, there are 45,000,000 iPhones and iPod touches in circulation. That's 45 million active devices and active users, and counting. If you Google this, you'll see that the game "Pocket God" sold an average of 20,000 per day in one month, and it's not even a game - it's more like an interactive screensaver IMO.
Only a few are going to be millionaires, but it's still very possible if you have the right formula for a game or app, and of course, the right price tag on it. Think back when the iPhone first came out and Steve Jobs said it could offer "desktop-class" applications. Not too long after, he said there was no native SDK - only web-based applications through Safari. Without an Adobe Flash Player plug-in (in retrospect, a financially strategic move IMO), there was nothing "fun" to do but surf, listen to music, or watch videos. Whether or not it was intentional to NOT produce a native SDK right away, I believe it created a vacuum - a void that needed to be filled - and as soon as the first apps came out, everyone rushed to buy, no matter what price it was. That propelled some unlikely developers into the financial stratosphere. Now, we're inundated with fart machines and many other useless apps - but some still manage to sell, if you have the edge.
As far as I'm concerned, my $99 license paid for itself within the first three weeks on the App Store, and the time and effort to continue development remains to be more than worth it. The only concern I have now is Apple's FairPlay implementation and the rampant piracy that's in the jailbreak scene. Piracy for iPhone apps has gotten to a point where it's simply thrown through a cracking application and it's ready to spread worldwide. Like Qualcomm's BREW implementation, if they can encrypt the applications where one bit change would deem the application useless, all developers would really get the returns they deserve, and everyone would be a paying customer.
So, one year after Tipster was released, I'm ready to do it again. I've submitted my first game and consequently, the first and only space tactical combat simulator to the App Store, thanks to iTGB. Let's hope I found the key formula to being unique and exciting, and that my $750 investment here would have been worth it.
ARCHANGEL: FATE OF THE GALACTIC COMMONWEALTH
Details can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/archfgc
Video can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/archvideo
Big icon can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/archpict
Thanks for reading.
07/24/2009 (5:49 am)
Chris,I'd be happy to share my story right here.
My first submission to the App Store wasn't a game, it was a tip calculator called Tipster. I blindly purchased an iPhone Developer's license the moment it was available, but I had zero knowledge and experience in Objective-C, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), and even using Xcode. I did some reading at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore, but felt incredibly frustrated with Objective-C's syntax and how generally convoluted the code was to perform a simple task. I basically did a crash course on the July 4th holiday weekend last year and submitted it right before the deadline when the App Store was due to open.
For some odd reason, it took three weeks for my app to get approved, and by then, there were approximately 30 other tip calculators out there, ranging from free to $2.99. Perhaps they were inundated with tip calculators, or they were just inundated with app submissions. Only God and Steve Jobs know who's running the show over there, and how it's being run when it comes to approving apps, even to this day. Back then, no one knew what other applications were going to be out there, so I thought I was going to make a killing coming up with something cheap and unique - boy, was I wrong.
Fast forward one year from now, and with over 150 tip calculators in the App Store (yes, I checked), my program still manages to sell on the average of 5-15 sales per day all over the world. So, I'm not a millionaire or hundred-thousand-aire, but it's like getting a free lunch everyday. I fell off my chair early this year as my sales skyrocketed to over 2600 in February, and 1600 more in March!
Now, if you create an app or game that is truly unique and/or exciting to play or use, your results can vary greatly. If I can still average a dozen sales every day with a tip calculator when there is so much competition, you might be able to imagine what the sales could be like. Remember, there are 45,000,000 iPhones and iPod touches in circulation. That's 45 million active devices and active users, and counting. If you Google this, you'll see that the game "Pocket God" sold an average of 20,000 per day in one month, and it's not even a game - it's more like an interactive screensaver IMO.
Only a few are going to be millionaires, but it's still very possible if you have the right formula for a game or app, and of course, the right price tag on it. Think back when the iPhone first came out and Steve Jobs said it could offer "desktop-class" applications. Not too long after, he said there was no native SDK - only web-based applications through Safari. Without an Adobe Flash Player plug-in (in retrospect, a financially strategic move IMO), there was nothing "fun" to do but surf, listen to music, or watch videos. Whether or not it was intentional to NOT produce a native SDK right away, I believe it created a vacuum - a void that needed to be filled - and as soon as the first apps came out, everyone rushed to buy, no matter what price it was. That propelled some unlikely developers into the financial stratosphere. Now, we're inundated with fart machines and many other useless apps - but some still manage to sell, if you have the edge.
As far as I'm concerned, my $99 license paid for itself within the first three weeks on the App Store, and the time and effort to continue development remains to be more than worth it. The only concern I have now is Apple's FairPlay implementation and the rampant piracy that's in the jailbreak scene. Piracy for iPhone apps has gotten to a point where it's simply thrown through a cracking application and it's ready to spread worldwide. Like Qualcomm's BREW implementation, if they can encrypt the applications where one bit change would deem the application useless, all developers would really get the returns they deserve, and everyone would be a paying customer.
So, one year after Tipster was released, I'm ready to do it again. I've submitted my first game and consequently, the first and only space tactical combat simulator to the App Store, thanks to iTGB. Let's hope I found the key formula to being unique and exciting, and that my $750 investment here would have been worth it.
ARCHANGEL: FATE OF THE GALACTIC COMMONWEALTH
Details can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/archfgc
Video can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/archvideo
Big icon can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/archpict
Thanks for reading.
#3
But first a little background about our team. This was the first iPhone game developed by Blue Omega Mobile. Before that, we developed the console/PC game Damnation (as Blue Omega Entertainment), published by Codemasters for the PS3, 360, and PC. That game didn't do so well and got mostly horrible reviews. What could have been a great game was hampered by lawsuits and various problems with subcontractors and major problems with our publisher. The details of which will be left for another story ;) Blue Omega was set up differently than most game developers - we had a small core team that develops IP and then we outsource just about everything - all programming, art, and sound was outsourced to external studios for example.
So anyway, as development on Damnation was wrapping up, we decided that we wanted to work on some smaller focused games, where we were entirely in control of everything (could develop in house, without the need for financing from evil publishers or sub-par subcontractors). Developing for the iPhone seemed to be a logical step. After a bit of research, we chose iTGB as our engine (I had some previous experience with Torque, being a TGE and TGEA indie licensee for myself, as well as working on various Tribes mods and scripts). We took about 5 months to develop Attack of the Dust Bunnies, 1-2 months of which were spent rewriting TorqueScript into C++ (since TorqueScript proved to be too slow for our game), and adding some engine features needed (Datablock management, etc).
It took 3 weeks for our App to get approved (we submitted right around the time that 3.0 was released to the masses). About one week after Attack of the Dust Bunnies was submitted to the AppStore, the entire Blue Omega team was laid off. This happened because our publisher for Damnation is apparently broke and can't pay money that they owe Blue Omega (the owner of Blue Omega told me this was ok to talk about..so I'm going for it!), which means Blue Omega couldn't pay payroll, hence the layoffs. A few of us were hired by Blue Omega's parent company (myself included) so I am taking care of Attack of the Dust Bunnies, with the hope that someday it will start selling well and we can get the company back together to focus on casual games :)
So, now about sales. Attack of the Dust Bunnies first went on sale July 2nd and for the first few days it was on sale, it sold around 35 copies a day. Since that time period sales have gone way down and we are selling about 5 copies a day at the $2.99 price point. We have sent out a press release along with codes to download it for free to almost all of the major press sites, but so far only 1 review has been posted (which was positive, other than complaining about the price - it seems people have totally unrealistic expectations about price on the AppStore...thanks to .99 cent crap apps). There have been quite a few user reviews in forums and such that have all been very positive (quite different from Damnation!)
There are a few things I am going to try to increase sales - the first being developing a free version of the game that contains 1 level and hopefully get the file size down to under 10mb for the free version so it can be downloaded over the air. We may also try putting the game on sale for awhile to see if that helps increase sales.
The only other thing I would like to add is that our game was released on July 2nd. 1 week after that, I checked to see how many new games were released in the 'Action' category ....300 new games had been released in that 1 week time period, pretty insane to try to compete with that.
Hope this helps.
07/24/2009 (7:09 am)
I don't mind sharing Attack of the Dust Bunnies (http://www.attackofthedustbunnies) sales data at all.But first a little background about our team. This was the first iPhone game developed by Blue Omega Mobile. Before that, we developed the console/PC game Damnation (as Blue Omega Entertainment), published by Codemasters for the PS3, 360, and PC. That game didn't do so well and got mostly horrible reviews. What could have been a great game was hampered by lawsuits and various problems with subcontractors and major problems with our publisher. The details of which will be left for another story ;) Blue Omega was set up differently than most game developers - we had a small core team that develops IP and then we outsource just about everything - all programming, art, and sound was outsourced to external studios for example.
So anyway, as development on Damnation was wrapping up, we decided that we wanted to work on some smaller focused games, where we were entirely in control of everything (could develop in house, without the need for financing from evil publishers or sub-par subcontractors). Developing for the iPhone seemed to be a logical step. After a bit of research, we chose iTGB as our engine (I had some previous experience with Torque, being a TGE and TGEA indie licensee for myself, as well as working on various Tribes mods and scripts). We took about 5 months to develop Attack of the Dust Bunnies, 1-2 months of which were spent rewriting TorqueScript into C++ (since TorqueScript proved to be too slow for our game), and adding some engine features needed (Datablock management, etc).
It took 3 weeks for our App to get approved (we submitted right around the time that 3.0 was released to the masses). About one week after Attack of the Dust Bunnies was submitted to the AppStore, the entire Blue Omega team was laid off. This happened because our publisher for Damnation is apparently broke and can't pay money that they owe Blue Omega (the owner of Blue Omega told me this was ok to talk about..so I'm going for it!), which means Blue Omega couldn't pay payroll, hence the layoffs. A few of us were hired by Blue Omega's parent company (myself included) so I am taking care of Attack of the Dust Bunnies, with the hope that someday it will start selling well and we can get the company back together to focus on casual games :)
So, now about sales. Attack of the Dust Bunnies first went on sale July 2nd and for the first few days it was on sale, it sold around 35 copies a day. Since that time period sales have gone way down and we are selling about 5 copies a day at the $2.99 price point. We have sent out a press release along with codes to download it for free to almost all of the major press sites, but so far only 1 review has been posted (which was positive, other than complaining about the price - it seems people have totally unrealistic expectations about price on the AppStore...thanks to .99 cent crap apps). There have been quite a few user reviews in forums and such that have all been very positive (quite different from Damnation!)
There are a few things I am going to try to increase sales - the first being developing a free version of the game that contains 1 level and hopefully get the file size down to under 10mb for the free version so it can be downloaded over the air. We may also try putting the game on sale for awhile to see if that helps increase sales.
The only other thing I would like to add is that our game was released on July 2nd. 1 week after that, I checked to see how many new games were released in the 'Action' category ....300 new games had been released in that 1 week time period, pretty insane to try to compete with that.
Hope this helps.
#4
While at Gaslight, I decided it was time to do iPhone development. I spent a month putting together a fun but quirky game. I'm currently working on finishing it up and hoping to get it released. It was that project I learned most of iTGB from. I also have been fortunate enough to gain a paying contract to produce a large scale game for the iPhone using iTGB for a punk/rock band. That project is getting close to completion.
Then, when Gaslight didn't work out, I decided I would do the App-a-Day project, where I would create 30 games, each made in less than a day. I have so far released 7 games. The entire thing has been an experiment in quick-prototype creation, how to release things in the App Store, and how to make them sell. The 7 games have been in the app store for about a month, and my total combined sales are about 30 - 40. I do about 1 sale a day. However, the advertising for these have not been a big focus just yet. Though I have found interesting things... the word 'Dungeon' in the title boosts sales. Posting the game to forums do not boost sales (I posted Tumblecaps to the top 5 iPhone Game forums. The post received a combined 200+ views, and I got 0 sales from those views). Now, something I do not have for any of my games yet, is a 'Lite' version, so I will be curious to see if that boosts sales. At the same time, all 30 of these games are very small games, at the polished prototype stage, so I am not expecting massive sales. However, I am able to watch trends, sales and what changes sales very very closely with this, so when I go to do my first big project, I already know what works and what does not.
The only real way to sell games and make a decent profit off them in the app store is either extremely good luck, or a solid viral marketing campaign that hits a lot of people. For my own future iPhone projects (and non iPhone, for that matter), there will be very large and very viral marketing campaigns.
07/24/2009 (12:47 pm)
Okay, here is some information about my experiences.While at Gaslight, I decided it was time to do iPhone development. I spent a month putting together a fun but quirky game. I'm currently working on finishing it up and hoping to get it released. It was that project I learned most of iTGB from. I also have been fortunate enough to gain a paying contract to produce a large scale game for the iPhone using iTGB for a punk/rock band. That project is getting close to completion.
Then, when Gaslight didn't work out, I decided I would do the App-a-Day project, where I would create 30 games, each made in less than a day. I have so far released 7 games. The entire thing has been an experiment in quick-prototype creation, how to release things in the App Store, and how to make them sell. The 7 games have been in the app store for about a month, and my total combined sales are about 30 - 40. I do about 1 sale a day. However, the advertising for these have not been a big focus just yet. Though I have found interesting things... the word 'Dungeon' in the title boosts sales. Posting the game to forums do not boost sales (I posted Tumblecaps to the top 5 iPhone Game forums. The post received a combined 200+ views, and I got 0 sales from those views). Now, something I do not have for any of my games yet, is a 'Lite' version, so I will be curious to see if that boosts sales. At the same time, all 30 of these games are very small games, at the polished prototype stage, so I am not expecting massive sales. However, I am able to watch trends, sales and what changes sales very very closely with this, so when I go to do my first big project, I already know what works and what does not.
The only real way to sell games and make a decent profit off them in the app store is either extremely good luck, or a solid viral marketing campaign that hits a lot of people. For my own future iPhone projects (and non iPhone, for that matter), there will be very large and very viral marketing campaigns.
#5
At that sales rate a free game utilizing admobs for revenue almost looks more attractive.
07/24/2009 (1:54 pm)
Not very encouraging results I have to say. I've done almost that well with a 99cent application that contains 20 pretty pictures you can save to your phone for a background. Considering the 3+ months of 20-30 hours a week I've put into my current game, I'll be pretty disappointed with 3-5 sales a day.At that sales rate a free game utilizing admobs for revenue almost looks more attractive.
#6
Starcassonne has a gallery feature that shows off our character art. I wanted to make it save to the iPod background but cut the feature for the sake of time.
07/24/2009 (2:11 pm)
@Bret... you've integrated background saving into iTGB? That would be some interesting code to me. Starcassonne has a gallery feature that shows off our character art. I wanted to make it save to the iPod background but cut the feature for the sake of time.
#7
07/24/2009 (2:19 pm)
@Bret: My research has told me that there is a very specific formula to having a successful product on the iPhone. If I'm correct, you could have a total piece of crap game, and with the right setup and formula of advertising and setup, you can make a lot of money. That is what I am still working on figuring out the details on. So I wouldn't set aside thoughts just yet... but don't spend multiple months making a single game for the iPhone. Anything over a few weeks to a month is probably too large for the price point.
#8
All Stars: Sales $150,000 plus. These game / apps are the one you hear about in the news.
High Performers: $30,000 to $100,000 a game. Mostly done by larger company and that have a large advertising budget, get here.
Do Gooders: $8,000 to $20,000. Apps that fill a need or just are well done, and gotten good reviews.
Real Worlders: $250 to $8,000. When making an iPhone game or app that you think will do well, this is what you should expect your return on investment should be.
Here is a list of website that I found, that talk about iPhone sales and related information; Note most of them are old. And thanks Bret for reminding me about AdMob.
adMobs
Free games with advertising built into it.
Most of its traffic of AdMob is from the iPhone.
Found a few bad review for their service.
I could not find on their website how much you make per click, but I found a blog talking about it. Stated it was 0.01 to 0.03 per click.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/iphone-now-50-percent-of-smartphone-web-traffic-in-the-us/
http://www.admob.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018847.html
http://www.stromcode.com/2009/03/18/admob-our-experience/
http://tophatmonocle.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/admob-is-a-waste-of-space/
Information about iFart and their sales.
http://www.joelcomm.com/more_exciting_app_store_news.html
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/12/flatulence-has-never-been-so-profitable-ifarts-success.ars
Game Loft sold 2 million iPhone apps out of 27 apps. Or using bad math it mean they made around $70,000 dollars for each app.
http://kotaku.com/5176723/gameloft-sells-2m-iphone-games
The best selling price for games is $0.99 or $4.99. And there is high turn over for apps.
http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/App+Store/feature.asp?c=14291
Supper monkey ball sells 300,000 apps
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54130
07/24/2009 (2:49 pm)
Thanks everyone for replying to my post, I haven't had a chance to get to respond until now. I have been going over everything I heard from people here and others that I talked to. I came up with a category of apps All stars, High Performers, Do Gooders, Real Worlders. Please let me know what you think.All Stars: Sales $150,000 plus. These game / apps are the one you hear about in the news.
High Performers: $30,000 to $100,000 a game. Mostly done by larger company and that have a large advertising budget, get here.
Do Gooders: $8,000 to $20,000. Apps that fill a need or just are well done, and gotten good reviews.
Real Worlders: $250 to $8,000. When making an iPhone game or app that you think will do well, this is what you should expect your return on investment should be.
Here is a list of website that I found, that talk about iPhone sales and related information; Note most of them are old. And thanks Bret for reminding me about AdMob.
adMobs
Free games with advertising built into it.
Most of its traffic of AdMob is from the iPhone.
Found a few bad review for their service.
I could not find on their website how much you make per click, but I found a blog talking about it. Stated it was 0.01 to 0.03 per click.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/iphone-now-50-percent-of-smartphone-web-traffic-in-the-us/
http://www.admob.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018847.html
http://www.stromcode.com/2009/03/18/admob-our-experience/
http://tophatmonocle.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/admob-is-a-waste-of-space/
Information about iFart and their sales.
http://www.joelcomm.com/more_exciting_app_store_news.html
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2008/12/flatulence-has-never-been-so-profitable-ifarts-success.ars
Game Loft sold 2 million iPhone apps out of 27 apps. Or using bad math it mean they made around $70,000 dollars for each app.
http://kotaku.com/5176723/gameloft-sells-2m-iphone-games
The best selling price for games is $0.99 or $4.99. And there is high turn over for apps.
http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/App+Store/feature.asp?c=14291
Supper monkey ball sells 300,000 apps
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54130
#9
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml
07/24/2009 (3:11 pm)
Oh yeah I forgot, Dave I think that is a cool idea 30 games in 30 days. I was thinking about doing a game a week for a year, after reading this article.http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml
#10
My current game is an Action RPG in line with Diablo, with a bit more focus on RPG than action, but not much. It's taking a lot of time because of the nature of RPG's and it's a one man team. I chose this type of project primary because I knew it'd keep me motivated to finish and to do a as good a job as time would allow. I'm finishing up the character creation, and then a few minor tweaks to the UI and then it's off to friends for the final playtesting while design the last 4 levels and quests (which are the easy part).
My game uses sqlite databases for the savegames and for all the "datablocks". So I ship with the database of items, prefixes/suffixes, vendor items, levels and monster stats etc. Then I copy an empty database for the savegame and level state information into your documents directory. This is my "writeable" database where I save items, character information etc.
I'm very happy with how the game turned out. It doesn't have everything I wanted because of time and artwork constraints, but for what I had to work with I'm very very happy with it.
07/24/2009 (3:26 pm)
@chris no I didn't do background saving for iTGB. My app was a native objective C++ application that is essentially a picture viewer. It came with 20 high quality nature pictures that you could view and save to your iphone pictures. These pictures you could then set as your background. Took me a whole 3 hours to write the application and I used 20 pictures from my honeymoon in New Zealand for the pictures. Between and and another Space version of it (containing free space pictures) I've sold about 1,000 copies, of which I've been paid about $400-$500 of it from apple. It was my first "test" of the iphone market. My current game is an Action RPG in line with Diablo, with a bit more focus on RPG than action, but not much. It's taking a lot of time because of the nature of RPG's and it's a one man team. I chose this type of project primary because I knew it'd keep me motivated to finish and to do a as good a job as time would allow. I'm finishing up the character creation, and then a few minor tweaks to the UI and then it's off to friends for the final playtesting while design the last 4 levels and quests (which are the easy part).
My game uses sqlite databases for the savegames and for all the "datablocks". So I ship with the database of items, prefixes/suffixes, vendor items, levels and monster stats etc. Then I copy an empty database for the savegame and level state information into your documents directory. This is my "writeable" database where I save items, character information etc.
I'm very happy with how the game turned out. It doesn't have everything I wanted because of time and artwork constraints, but for what I had to work with I'm very very happy with it.
Associate Dave Calabrese
Cerulean Games
I'd be happy to share information about the 7 published 'mini-games' I have so far put into the app store. I can also talk a little bit about details on full-scale productions I have been a part of for iPhone game development. Send me an email at BahamutZaero@Gmail.com and let me know what kinds of information you are looking for!
-Dave Calabrese