A game's life span on portals

[panforgold]

How long will a game be up on a landing page before it is moved or removed?
What are the minimum criteria for remaining on the landing page: $ volume, conversion rate, etc?
If moved from the landing page to somewhere else; are discounts generally applied to the retail price if moved off the landing page, i.e. US$19.95 – US$10.95?


I'm trying to do a forecast:) Thank you for your responses.

[Skinflint]

Your first two points are incredibly dependent upon the quality of the game itself and the different portals criteria for how they decide what gets promoted on their pages. Most portals will continue to "push" a game as long as it is selling well, whether that is in top-selling lists (which makes a lot of sense) to other featured spots where they make seemingly "arbitrary" decisions about what games get featured.

The answer to your third point is that the price generally stays the same and isn't reduced as time goes on, but someone else should feel free to bring up any specific points of portals that act differently than this.

[arcadetown]

Honestly you can project all you want but it all comes down to what users think. You can get a surprise hit like Cute Knight, a uber hit like Cake Mania with very long legs everywhere, a hit on some portals but not others like Age of Castles here, an instant hit that dies quickly, a modest hit to does ok, something that simply tanks, or combinations thereof.

Anyhow to answer your question every portal is different. Some give little exposure to new games maximizing exposure only to proven sellers, etc. Here we're a little different in that give top prime real estate to every new launch so all games start equal. If it performs well we'll give it additional exposure and see what happens, if it can't beat out other better sellers then unfortunately... Obviously a good seller will get more exposure across more portals.

[Nexic]

BigFish - Game gets a little promotion after release, then unless sells really well fades away almost instantly.

Reflexive - Even low sellers will get prolonged exposure but begins to dwindle after the 2nd month. Still get quite decent royalties from games that have been on there for over a year. This is down to their category and rating systems, along with decent search etc.

ArcadeTown - From a developer point of view exposure lasts quite a long time, but possibly because my games did 'okay' here rather than totally crappy as on portals like BFG.

Stardock - Sales have barely gone down since they first released Xeno Assault II. If you get on you should get long lasting exposure.