Rate 50,000 sales in downloadable game market.

I wouldn't say 50,000 in retail was a failure. Most title's sell less than that.

If an indie game sold 50,000 in 3 months it would be 10/10. Not many games achieve anything near that good. Only games that stay in portal top 10s for several weeks would do this well.

 

This depends on how much money you put into creating and marketing the game.

50,000 copies within the first 3 months would be un unbelievable success in my situation. It would be an 11 in my books.

But for someone like EA with a multimillion (if not multibillion) dollar marketing budget and massive production costs, I could see them judging this as a failiure.

 

I would rate it 10/10.
Now what do you do with this information?
(Don't plan to sell your first game this often, it won't happen.)

 

I would rate it 9/10, (it is even possible to sell more but the chances are VERY LOW.) The 9/10 is still nearly impossible to achieve with a small team and budget. You'd become a millionaire with such a game and you won't see many millionaires here.

 

These guys are just trying to be realistic. It's not a good idea to assume that you'll sell a lot of copies but for as long as you don't count on it financially, it doesn't matter much. No matter how great your first game is, I highly doubt you'll sell more than 100 copies a month without a high marketing budget. (Which would cut the profits too...)

 

He's saying don't expect that level of success your first time out. Sure, it may sell that well, but the odds are very much against you. If you set your sights on 50,000 sales and make that your gauge of success, you're just setting yourself up for disappointment. Hope for it, but don't expect it.

No, you will.

 

Frankly, people couldn't care less how much effort (or heart and soul) was put into making a game, they just care about it being fun or not.

 

Holy Sh*t!
I would buy a mansion and retire

 

I would feel like a god. No, I would be a god and all my words on this board would be cast in gold.

Please, at least promise to keep your day job, ok?

Honestly, keep your spirits up, dream big dreams but don't make the mistake a lot of people do: don't assume that you are better/have more luck than the majority or that you own some secret knowledge others don't have or that you can work harder than everyone else before. You don't.

Just look how many indie games you can find that sold that many copies.

This is the same discussion as "all games suck/others can't make good games" etc. A lot of people that are at least as good as you, with probably much more experience, tried it before you and had those problems. There's a reason for that.

This will prevent you from taking a plunge.

 

Hah! Of course people care about the heart and soul that is put into a game, because these two things are what make games fun in the first place. This is the secret that made Snood and Dweep bestsellers. Maybe you cannot readily analyze a game and point out where they put the heart and soul bits, but somehow these qualities surround the game on another plane of existence (call it karma) and people will know it when they encounter it. A game without heart and soul is a game not worth making.</handwaving>

 

Hope is not a strategy. Developing the game is one thing; have you already thought about how to sell it? The people who don't download your game to try it out, will never be able to see that difference...

 

Where did you get that 50,000 sales in 3 months figure from, anyway? You didn't just go "I'm making a game, and I think it will sell... er... 50,000 copies in 3 months" did you?

 

Isn't that falling into the same trap Alex apparently has fallen into? Your statement, if meant seriously, implies that everyone else who didn't make it to those sales levels didn't put enough heart and soul into their work. Heart and soul, hard work, ladeeda, blahblah, woowoo, is meaningless without a good game design that is actually engaging to play.

 

A key problem with the 50,000 / 3 month figure is that it assumes everyone knows about your game up front. I'd say your lowest sales are going to be in the first three months. It can take years to work up good word of mouth sales for a game. You'd only hit numbers like 50,000 if you got lucky with a mention in Newsweek or somesuch. Speaking from experience, it took about two years for sales to start peaking on the first indie game I released (and they were nowhere near the five figure range, all told).

 

Hahah this is ridiculous. Do the math. Round that up to 17k sales a month. At 35% of $19.95 you would take in $119,000 a month!

No, your game would be a failure. Stop dreaming of swinning in a pool of cash and finish your game :\

 

Maybe comparing to Diner Dash's recent quote of 50,000 units?

 

I was travelling on a train the other day, and I got stuck talking to an older man who told me about his life before he retired. At that time, he owned his own business buying and redistributing different things. He said to me, "You know, I'd buy five different things. And, sometimes two wouldn't sell at all, two would sell just plainly, and one would do just amazingly. And, there'd be no explanation as to why." He believed chance had more to do with sales that anything else. It didn't matter how good, or how bad something was.

I think if you have a ten million dollar marketing budget, ala Halo or Fantastic 4 the movie, you can help things along a little. Otherwise, welcome to the world of chance.

I hope you do really well, Alex_SphinxMedia.