I would say that is a 9 out of 10. It is uncommon but possible for the breakout hits. This is assuming you are going to sell it on many web sites including "portals" and places who make low priced "subscription" sales and pay you %25 or %30 percent of $6. That example would be the low end. On average you would get a little more than that. I am not trying to put down web sites like that. They can make you a lot of money. I am just clarifying what your expectations should be. If you plan to pocket $10 or more from each sale then I think selling 50,000 units in 3 months is completely unrealistic. That would be a 12 out of 10.
well.. if you do the math, if the net income for each game sold is probably 10$, selling 50K copies will mean u'll get 500K $ and that's not qualify you as a millionaire !half of a millionaire maybe or a mediocre millionaire, dude ur not even make a million
If the game would have an average conversion of 1%, it means you need around 5 million downloads. How are you going to do that in 3 months? That's huge. Maybe you could ask download.com to list your game on their front page. You never know ;-) Didier
These days there's rarely an association with quality and sales. There are tons of games that are absolute crap yet sell, and there are plenty of great games that don't sell. Everyone is giving you good advice, don't turn it away. It's ok to hope for good sales, but be prepared for no sales.
Re: Diner Dash, have you seen the size of the team at GameLab? There's a NY Times article about it. 1,000 copies per day. OMFG.
That was discussed here previously and the general consensus was that the journalist misquoted what he said. He's likely talking about downloads per day, not sales.
I don't know what 'general consensus' you were listening to, but 1000 sales a day is a reasonable figure, 1000 downloads a day is way too small.
Yeah, 1000 downloads is way too small. At a 1% conversion rate that's about 10 sales a day. There's quite a few Indies who sell that much on their own site (especially with multiple titles). If you have your game on just one or two portals, you'll easily exceed 1000 downloads a day. Diner Dash is everywhere and a top seller, so I'd lean towards the 1000 sales a day figure as well.
Sorry, catching the thread a bit late. Well, here's my personal story: before starting FunPause, I started a business making and selling embedded software, and built it up to a company of 60+ people (I left but the company is still doing really well). My first game still was (and will continue to be) disastrous in terms of sales; fortunately my second game is doing well. It's completely obvious why my first title really sucks, now, but I had to switch mindsets completely before I could see it. So, I concur with others: you should keep your job, release your first game, market it long and hard, and see. It would be wonderful if the game is a big hit and you can go fulltime right away. If not, you will have data to correct your aim and probably a network of contacts to help market your next game Best regards, Emmanuel
He was talking about 50k copies per 3 months, it's not like the lifecycle of an indie game is 3 months.
Yeah I don't know where that "general concensus" came from either as we alone easily blow out the 1k downloads per day for DD. Like James said it's possible if utilizing all possible avenues and you have a top seller. If just from that indie's site then 50k sales is an 15/10.
50K is huge. That being said, success is about profits so I guess it depends on - team size, development time, investments, marketing money, portals royalty rate etc.
If your game had a 1% conversion ratio(actually quite hard to achieve). If you could somehow get 55,555 targeted downloads a day. ((55555 / 100.) * 30) * 3 50,000 If each *targeted* download cost you 5 cents in marketing then it would cost you $2777.75 / day. Or over 3 months about $250,000. Have fun!
Diner dash is on *EVERY* possible site/portal/tv show/etc etc. It isn't a surprise that sells so much. But remember that from many portals they'll get about 25-30% of royalty. Still an awesome result