Non-casual games - is it worth it?

[jaguard]

Greetings. We have two games, which are originally for the PocketPC platform.
They are pretty successful there, but it's too small market to actually
earn a living there, and to advance further. We've been thinking about
palm, but it's dying. Symbian smartphones are the way, but they are
way too limited to fit our games - they are too big for most of the
symbian smartphones, both in size and ram required.
So now we are thinking about porting these games to PC.
The main problem is that most of the graphics must be recreated. It's
too small, since PPCs has 320x240 resolution, and the graphics isn't
renderred, it's a pixel-art.
And I want to apply to you, showing these games, and waiting for an
advice. Just how successful can we become with these games? Is it actually
worth it? I.e. $2k earnings wouldn't be enough, we'll pay for new graphics
more.
As far as I know, there are no big and popular portals for non-casual games,
so we'd have to market it ourself, right? I know many people trying to
work on non-casual shareware games, but are they successful?

Most of the gamers state that these are just great games, amazing and such.
They are pretty unique, but they are not casual - one is acrade-platformer,
but not a standart one - it consists of two different things - one is
flying in space everywhere, shooting enemies and upgrading weapons.
Another is land missions to kill everyone. So the first part is like
Starcontrol, and another is like Paratrooper/Sabotage.

Second game is a strategy based on cards gameplay, like Magic: The Gathering,
but with a campaign, city buildings, deck upgrades and stuff.
So you see - they both are "hardcore" type of games - one because it
contains space, and space is not something casuals like, and another is a
strategy, and it's a hard one, not like Virtual Villagers, people must
read cards descriptions, and people don't like reading.

Here come the PC builds of these games. (resolution 320x240)

http://www.pocketmoregames.com/enslave-pc.zip
http://www.pocketmoregames.com/orions-pc.zip

(You may need to "register" them, keys provided in readme.txt)

Original pages with screenshots and descriptions are available at
http://pocketmoregames.com

[Andy]

I bet you will make at least $2001 with any of these two games. You've got great stuff there really.

Side note: Having non-casual game isn't any your fault. ;)

[MFS]

I second the above opinion. Both of those games are of a good enough quality to earn you some respectable PC sales. I know that remaking the graphics is a pain, but in your case, I think it would pay off.

Those are some really nice games for the PocketPC by the way.

[Nexic]

Those are both great games!

No one can give you any guarantees but I'm guessing even without portals you'd easily get more than $2k from them. Get some 640x480 or even 800x600 graphics and allow them to do more stuff with the mouse (so click to fire instead of space bar).

Lots of people do well without portals, but honestly with the above updates you can probably get on some good sites anyway: ArcadeTown, Reflexive, TotalGaming and Manifesto most likely.

[electronicStar]

Noone can predict how games will sell but these two seem better than a lot of current portal games, so it might be worth a try.
Although I suppose it could prove a bit tricky to upscale the graphics and gameplay for higher rez.

[LilGames]

I disagree that Palm is a dying platform. In the last year, I've seen a reversal in our sales of PPC vs Palm for the same game. Now ok, judging trends just on 1 game is not very reliable, but I find it bizarre that we used to get almost no sales of our Palm game 3 years ago, and now we sell a few copies every week, without changing any of our marketing.

I'm thinking either a big popular site decided to link or promote our Palm game, OR some popular new Palm devices have been released (Palm phone maybe?)

Just to put it into context for people, this is the game:
http://www.sporecubes.com/

[Nexic]

No sales of our Palm game 3 years ago, and now we sell a few copies every week.

For a while I was only selling 2 copies of Xeno Assault per month, now I sell 8+. I don't suppose this is any kind of market trend, just that my site grew in traffic over the years. I'm betting it's the same for you.

[whisperstorm]

You might also consider porting it to GP2X: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GP2X

I've heard it's growing in popularity and given that there are few competitors in this space you could easily have a captive audience/market.

[jaguard]

Well, I also believe that we can earn $2k with these games, but it's not enough :). I think something around $10k in a first year would be the minimum to just start the whole thing, since really it's a lot of work to recreate graphics, effects and update gameplay.
I wanted to know if anyone has experience promoting such games, and if they could share at least approximate earnings (i.e. how many numbers are there in their revenue :)).

As for palm, I still think it's dying. The real problem is that it's just painfully slow. We have once hired a programmer to do porting, and he's given up trying to at least reach a few FPS.
Maybe if we find partners to do porting on a share revenue basis, it could earn some extra bucks(are there any? :)).

GP2x is something unknown, but what scares me most that there are no infrastracture to sell games there. It's a homebrew platform, so looks like most people expect games to be free.

[Andy]

You will make 3500 from that card game. And 2300 on the arcade one.
If you will be lucky enough you will push it onto retails and make additional 10K from every such deal.

This is really very tricky to achive such figures but this is what could be done being implemented properly.

[Pyabo]

You might also consider porting it to GP2X: .

You can't be serious... they are specifically trying to get OUT of a market with few customers. GP2X would be 10 times worse.

[Genimo]

As far as I know, there are no big and popular portals for non-casual games,
so we'd have to market it ourself, right?
...
Second game is a strategy based on cards gameplay, like Magic: The Gathering,
but with a campaign, city buildings, deck upgrades and stuff.

I also believe that there is a market for these kind of games, and I think you will be able to sell more then $2K worth of games on portals like Reflexive and Arcadetown. Just to give you another viewpoint, even though our Reflexive affiliate portal (http://www.genimo.com) is tiny, we where able to sell 17 copies of Astral Masters (http://www.genimo.com/games/astral_masters) (also a card strategy game) this year.

[LilGames]

For a while I was only selling 2 copies of Xeno Assault per month, now I sell 8+. I don't suppose this is any kind of market trend, just that my site grew in traffic over the years. I'm betting it's the same for you.

No, no traffic growth for us. In fact, it has shrunk by about 20%.

[whisperstorm]

Well, there's psp, nds, or virtual console games on wii or 360...