Sales numbers from Mac App Store

[Man of Ice]

Just thought I wanted to share these to give people an idea. They've been posted various other places too - and I know Matthew and Martin also have posted their numbers.

We got 2 older games (both iOS, one also PC/Mac) in the store on launch day - that we could see no harm in simply 1:1 porting over. Their sales on iOS is 2-3-4 units a day, so nothing to loose. We decided to not go for a race to the bottom on the price - and have them at $2.99 each to see what happens.

We had the luck that one of them - Smack Hockey - even got a world wide Staff Favorite promotion.

Mac App Store Day 1:
10 sales of Monster Ball
50 sales of Smack Hockey (#70'ish on top-100 in US games)

Day 2:
5 Monster Ball
44 Smack Hockey (still #70'ish)

So nothing totally spectacular - we did not become instant billionaires. But the games have some additional sales at almost no extra work (using Unity, so it was almost a matter of simply building and wrapping the game with the app store things).

Hope someone finds the numbers usable.

/Thomas

[joe]

50 sales/day is not that bad!!

[Jack Norton]

Hehe seems to see the iphone thing again. 50 day but at $2.99, which is $2, means $100/day. Not bad for sure, but is 5 sales of a normal $19.99 game a day.
Now if you have a very old game that doesn't sell anymore, fine, but releasing new games at that price seems crazy to me. I mean, is not a different device, is the same old mac where people would happily pay $19.99 for a quality game.

But anyway I'm sure that soon it will be swamped by supercheap games and quick ports of iphone games.

[richtaur]

Thanks a lot for sharing your numbers!

[Man of Ice]

@Jack - they are older games from our catalogue that didnt sell well in the first place. And they are iOS ports primarily. So hard to turn a $1-2-3 into a $20 game :-)

But I agree that it would be much nicer to sell the same games at $20 than at $3.

Day 3:
Smack Hockey 44
MB 5

So same as day 2. I know several of my community friends who are selling 300-400 units a day at the moment.

And it also lightens my spirit to see quite a few more expensive games making it nicely on the Mac app store too. So its (until now) not a race to the bottom.

/Thomas

[Grey Alien]

Thanks for sharing! I know someone that has >1 game on there and has made a couple of thousand bucks in two days. Can't give more details. Pretty encouraging though! Of course it may well slow down once the "new apple thing" hype wears off.

I went to buy an OSX 10.6 upgrade and the Mac shop I went to in Vancouver downtown had SOLD OUT.

[Jack Norton]

I have the upgrade but refuses to install on my macmini because has not enough RAM (needs 1Gb). First time I see an OS refusing to install completely...
I'm pretty sure that it will slow down a lot in few months. Again those who got there early probably made a good move.

[galent]

Just to add here, a number of Unity based studios have reported their sales experience, have a look:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/730...re-opening-day

Looks good to me

Cheers,

Galen

[DanFromFastSpring.com]

Thanks for sharing. That's interesting to hear.

[LateNight]

I was under the impression that Unity would have to be updated to handle Apple's App Store DRM correctly. Did you find some way to implement Apple's DRM yourself or did you just ignore the DRM and hope they didn't reject on that basis?

[FlySim]

This looked helpful to sort out Unity and Apple store:
http://technology.blurst.com/unity-g...mac-app-store/

[joe]

Hehe seems to see the iphone thing again. 50 day but at $2.99, which is $2, means $100/day. Not bad for sure, but is 5 sales of a normal $19.99 game a day.

Ah yes, that's right. Didn't think of that

Do you get the customer data if you sell through the mac app store, so you can email them?

[Grey Alien]

Do you get the customer data if you sell through the mac app store, so you can email them?

Now that is a very good point! You also used to get email addresses from Reflexive affiliate sales I think, which was pretty cool.

[GolfHacker]

Now that is a very good point! You also used to get email addresses from Reflexive affiliate sales I think, which was pretty cool.

Not that I ever saw. Not from sales of my own games or affiliate sales.

[Maupin]

They were available in the sales XML feed or you could get them by designing a report on the Gamecentersolution web interface.

[Man of Ice]

You do not get customer contact data from the sales on MAS. You get daily # of sales stats.

If you want more data, you either have to ask people to e.g. sign up for something or similar.

There was a nice article on Gamasutra yesterday with some info that might/might not be interesting to read for those interested:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...epocalypse.php

On the DRM part - we simply ignored it and shipped off the game none the less for approval. Sure it will lead to piracy - but so will including DRM. Monster Ball has been available without DRM via Direct2Drive etc for ages and is already out in the wild. So nothing to loose.

/Thomas

[Grey Alien]

They were available in the sales XML feed or you could get them by designing a report on the Gamecentersolution web interface.

Yep that's what I did, I got a whopping 36 early on and forgot to get the rest before Amazon changed it all up. Hey maybe I can still get them?

[LateNight]

This looked helpful to sort out Unity and Apple store:
http://technology.blurst.com/unity-g...mac-app-store/

Well it is, but it takes a hit-and-hope approach on player prefs (which I don't personally use) and I can't find any reference to the DRM which is the only point I'm actually concerned about. The other stuff shouldn't really need any intervention from Unity, as far as I can see.

So I guess the question could equally be asked of the Blurst guys. Did they just ignore the DRM and hope Apple won't reject based on that, or am I missing a way to implement the DRM for Unity?

[kraz007]

Do you get the customer data if you sell through the mac app store, so you can email them?

I second that question? If you can follow up on sales (in any way, doesn't have to be email), you can actually have a loss leader.

[Grey Alien]

Found some more sales figures: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives...es_figures.php

[Grey Alien]

Founds some great stats for And Yet It Moves: http://www.brokenrul.es/blog/?p=690

[Jack Norton]

In the end, we learned: the lower the price the higher the revenue.

Desktop games for $0.99 here we comes!!!!!!!

[CasualInsider]

Or... give your game away for free and use micro-transactions to monetize.

[Man of Ice]

But..... I'm more and more certain myself that the freemium route is the way to go for indies in general.

So I really dont see anything bad in this. If you can deliver a good game experience, people are definitely willing to buy into your game afterwards. Lots of sales numbers support this.

Can you bank on that? No.

Can you bank on releasing your game at $15-20? No.

Still down to making a good game and being lucky.

[Jack Norton]

Can you bank on releasing your game at $15-20? No.

I do that and works fine for me
It depends on the kind of game. Saying that only freemium/transactions is the future is wrong. I cannot see that model taking off for certain genres (adventure games, visual novels, dating sims for example).

For other games like strategy/RPG yes. I even thought about adding MT to my upcoming sci-fi RPG but in the end went with the classic one price. But might do that or expansions.

[Jack Norton]

Or... give your game away for free and use micro-transactions to monetize.

Brian do you know if Apple will let you do that though? I mean, seems strange for them to let you put a game for free and maybe make $500k with MT
(unless yours was just a general comment about desktop $0.99 games)

[Grey Alien]

I met the Angry Birds guys yesterday and they said that they've sold around 20 million copies on iOS, so yeah you don't have do go freemium. However, they also stuck it on Android and used Admob and made about the SAME amount of money from 15M or so free downloads as sales on iOS. Wow.

[CasualInsider]

Piracy is a big problem with iOS and so is exposure. If your game is free and based on micro-transactions it can do better than if it was just priced at the otherwise necessary 99 cents. It's not at all likely that your game will be the next Angry Birds, and far more likely it will just get lost in the heap. I think well designed F2P mechanics are a safer bet. People who would otherwise pirate can just download it for free and potentially become fanatically vocal about loving the game, and people who love the game and have money to spend will spend it on their new hobby.

"In app purchase" for desktop apps to use will probably be possible with near future updates. Using this to buy in game premium currency would be the only option as far as I can tell. Free games with micro-transactions are way more appealing to me than the race to the bottom. I think the best use of the Mac App Store is to use it as a vehicle to get more true fans: make it easy to get people to your Facebook fan page so they can like it and you can reactive them anytime in the future to then buy from you direct. Now is a good time of educating customers on the benefits of buying direct from you as well (new releases before they appear anywhere else including the Mac App Store, 100% satisfaction guarantee refund policy, more features not possible thanks to Apple's restrictions, and so on). I do not look forward to when Apple inevitably locks down the OS and makes the Mac App Store the only way to install software on a Mac.

[Jack Norton]

I do not look forward to when Apple inevitably locks down the OS and makes the Mac App Store the only way to install software on a Mac.

Yeah, in that case though the mac won't be a "Personal Computer" anymore, but a console!!

I agree with your thoughts about F2P, but honestly I'm thinking it works better with webgames. Also you have the advantage of not caring at all which browser/OS people use to visit your site, reduces compatibility problems, you don't have to get mad with certification/approval, and so on!
I'm so looking forward to see blitzmax:monkey released!!

And a final note: for some games like story-based game F2P is never going to work I think.

[jcottier]

I met the Angry Birds guys yesterday and they said that they've sold around 20 million copies on iOS, so yeah you don't have do go freemium. However, they also stuck it on Android and used Admob and made about the SAME amount of money from 15M or so free downloads as sales on iOS. Wow.

Don't bet on such a massive success on iOS, you'll be very disappointed
It's like betting you'll won the lottery.

Jc