Amazon App Store

[Bram]

Hello dear colleagues,

Does anyone here have experience with publishing on Amazon's app store?
Some questions I have include:

• Is it much different from a generic Google Play app?
• Do you need a Kindle Fire to test, or can you manage without one?
• What kind of volume are you seeing, compared to Google Play?
• Is customer support working well?
• Is IAP hard to implement?
• Does it require specific NDK versions or SDK versions?
• Does Amazon pay sales tax for you, like Apple does, and Google does not?

Any info you could share would be appreciated!

[SLotman]

I only have ad-supported games in there, so I can't comment on taxes and other things.

I don't have a Kindle Fire - my games are exactly the same on Google Play. They have a test/approval process, just like Apple.

The Google statistics are way more informative than Amazon - Amazon only shows 'downloads' (in the report tool, they show downloaded/returned but that's it), not even active installs, which in my opnion is much more interesting to know.

That being said, my app was downloaded way more on Amazon than on Google Play.

[Four]

>Do you need a Kindle Fire to test, or can you manage without one?
You don't need a kindle fire to test on, you can manage without one. You probably won't even have to emulate it too.


>Does it require specific NDK versions or SDK versions?
No Google API. Chances are you are not even using it. No specific NDK or SDK required, very straight forward.


It's not hard to submit an app to Amazon, and when you submit an app it doesn't just go to Kindle Fire, but a many other devices as well. It shouldn't take much effort to prepare your app for Amazon. If your free app is getting more than 1000 downloads a day, then go ahead, if its <100 then perhaps spend time on improving your app.

Edit One quick thing to add. When linking to a paid app from your free app (or any app for that matter) Amazon app store supports market://details?id=... however when submitting they don't allow it, and you must hard link to Amazons app store, I don't remember their specific market url, but its fairly straight forward. Just a heads up as their review process takes a few days.

[Bram]

Thanks guys, I started a port for Amazon app store.
The IAP docs are out of date and messy, but overall, it is pretty easy to do.

Once Amazon and OUYA are done, I may be tempted to investigate 'Raspberry Pi'.
Its app store has just 10 games listed.
Talk about virgin territory! They sold 1M devices, so there may be a market. Although it will be a small one of course.

[Bram]

I got approved today.
My game is now available on amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ref=tlctc_home
I'll report back on sales figures later.

[Nutter2000]

Checked out the "Pi Store" and I see #1 "The Little Crane That Could"
Congratulations! how's it going?

[Bram]

Checked out the "Pi Store" and I see #1 "The Little Crane That Could"
Congratulations! how's it going?

The Raspberry Pi port was really done on a 'dare'.
I don't think there will ever be a real pi market.
There are 1M devices sold, but those devices end up in robots and such.

In the first 4 days, it got 380 downloads.
There is a tip jar, but I don't think it ever got a single cent.
It's a bit hard to gauge anyway, because the pistore lacks proper stats.

I think my amazon release was messed up.
There are downloads, but no IAPs. I think IAP is not working, judging from feedback.

Bram

[Nutter2000]

Heh yes, I know a lot of people who bought a Pi and now don't know what to do with it so I wondered if there was a market there too. 380 downloads out of 1M potential isn't a bad start :-)
Did you add any other monetisation options like in game ads?

Bad luck on the Amazon release!
I presume you're using the Amazon IAP system?

[Bram]

I'll report back on sales figures later.

The good news: really nice IAP conversion rate of 7% which beats Google Play and iOS App Store.
The bad news: download volume is pretty abysmal.

On Google Play, the game did 70K downloads on its best day, and dropped down to 5K downloads per day currently.
iOS is now at 12K downloads per day or so.

Amazon app store never even got close to 1K free downloads per day.
All in all not a big pay off.
At current levels, I would only recommend it to other devs because porting to Amazon is pretty easy once you have a Google Play version.

[strategy]

Pretty much parallels my experience: the Amazon appstore is OK, but it simply doesn't drive the volume that you can get on Google Play (discovery problems and all).

I know a few guys for whom the Amazon appstore is their main source of revenue, but that is for _very_ niche titles.

[Nutter2000]

Thanks for letting us know Bram
Guess we should treat it as an added extra and not focus too much on it