Hi friends!

I found this site and I think is very interesting:
http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/infochat/post...d=63004236
And nowadays I know there are about 14 millons of iPhones.

Do you know where I can find similar data? It is interesting to know 65% iphone onwers are men, and I guess this data on the iPod would be very different.

All this data (salary, sex, age, number...) is important to choose what kind of game or program you are going to create.

Thanks a lot for your help.

riruilo Wrote:Hi friends!

I found this site and I think is very interesting:
http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/infochat/post...d=63004236
And nowadays I know there are about 14 millons of iPhones.

Do you know where I can find similar data? It is interesting to know 65% iphone onwers are men, and I guess this data on the iPod would be very different.

All this data (salary, sex, age, number...) is important to choose what kind of game or program you are going to create.

Thanks a lot for your help.

I haven't seen demographics or actual sales numbers for the iPod touch, but anecdotal evidence suggests around 10 million touches sold. Add to the iPhones and you have 24 million units on which to sell games. That's more systems than the N64, Genesis, Xbox, Xbox 360, GameCube, Saturn, PS3, Dreamcast, and Game Gear. And it's rapidly approaching the numbers for the Wii and PSP (It won't catch the NES, SNES, GameBoy, GBA, DS, PSX, or PS2 for some time).

In other words the market is large enough that any game can be successful if it's well made.

Of course, that assumes we work out the whole 99 cent pricing fiasco on the App Store.

Thanks for your reply.

BTW, could you explain this sentence, I don't understand it very well. Is there any problem selling games for 99 cents?

Bachus Wrote:Of course, that assumes we work out the whole 99 cent pricing fiasco on the App Store.

Thanks.

I think he's referring to the articles lately about how everything having to be priced at 99 cents, just to get any attention, is making developers hesitate dumping more investment into a product (time and/or money). Some believe they're just complainers, and others believe Apple could be (should be) helping market conditions be more favorable for bigger productions.

At the risk of going off-topic, even though it's tied to those statistics: I'm mostly undecided about it myself. I love the fact that it's a level playing field (for the most part), but I know first-hand how much work it takes to make a decent game, and the financial risks involved. Seems like just allowing a demo system might be enough to help cure the 99 cent blues. I hate seeing all those "lite" versions causing more crowding in the market space.

[edit] What I meant by "level playing field" is that little companies and one-man-shows can have products right next to AAA game house products. Unfortunately, what's not "level" is that Apple decides what's a staff favorite at any given moment, and I've seen some stats by developers showing the effects of what Apple's magic blessing does to a product's sales health. Apple shouldn't be fiddling with sales like that without allowing some measure of marketing control for the developers as well (which is also a bad idea IMHO), which is why I think they should remove that "feature" from the app store immediately. Let the market decide, not Apple. I think it works better with music because music is marketed in other ways, and is not exclusive to iTunes. iPhone apps, OTOH, are exclusive to iPhone (and iTunes/App Store), and therefore I believe this creates a serious conflict. ... well, and it's just downright unfair.

Quote:I think he's referring to the articles lately about how everything having to be priced at 99 cents, just to get any attention, is making developers hesitate dumping more investment into a product (time and/or money).

Yea.

In order to be successful in the App Store you have to be on a Top 100 list. If you're not in the Top 100, you're making diddly-squat. The Top 100 lists are based on number of apps sold, not price or reviews or anything like that. So 99 cent apps sell more copies than more expensive apps, even if they're making less money. So the move higher in the lists and the more expensive apps fall off the lists.

All that results in bigger, better, more expensive apps being incredibly risky. For the moment. Hopefully everything will get better in the near future.

*twiddles his thumbs while he still waits for Apple to approve his game*

Bachus Wrote:In order to be successful in the App Store you have to be on a Top 100 list. If you're not in the Top 100, you're making diddly-squat.

This isn't true at all, I haven't been on the top 100 since the first month of release and I make enough to live off of from my Apps. Granted you don't make as much but there are many factors to take into account.

If you are selling 99 cents apps you more then likely can't live without being on the top 100 though. Seriously 99 cent developers you are undervaluing our whole field.

kodex Wrote:Seriously 99 cent developers you are undervaluing our whole field.

That's one of the reasons I'm on the fence about the "99 cent fiasco". I mean, is it developers just getting overly greedy to the point that they can't figure out how to market their products for more than 99 cents, even though they could just as well charge what they need and work with that, or are they just doing a grab right now, all trying to out-lower-cost each other? The whole "charge what the market will bear" theory seems to be completely forgotten at this moment. I hope Apple doesn't totally freak out and flinch (but I hope they react by allowing demos and hopefully stop blessing products). The marketing and business psychology on this is sure to result in many graduate theses in the coming year!

I personally thought prices started too high for most games, and now I think they're too low. Couldn't they just as well start climbing back into the middle range all by themselves? Can the iPhone game market correct itself? Does it *have* to be regulated by Apple at all? (I still want demos and no blessings)

kodex Wrote:Seriously 99 cent developers you are undervaluing our whole field.

As one of these 99c culprits...

I've been playing with pricing to see where it generates the most profit and this is where I ended up. IMO it's sad for developers and for the store in general, but Apple made the rules, and this is the result.

As has been said, there are solutions to the price war, and hopefully Apple will implement them, but I'm not going to leave money on the table right now in a feeble protest against the current system.

I may start playing with prices myself, but it seems like a slippery slope for my app to end up at 99 cents ... it is currently at $4.99.

Also, as to the stats of the iPod Touch... from my users that I know of for my gas mileage app, only about 9% of the users are using a Touch... the vast majority that I know about are on an iPhone. But my market - people interested in tracking vehicle fuel economy - is quite a bit different than the gamer market.

I just don't believe in the "99 cent fiasco" one bit. There is plenty of software in the top 100 that sells for a lot more than 99 cents. Currently top apps #3, #4, #5, #7, #10, #12, #13, #14, and #16 are all more than 99 cents. That's Fieldrunners, The Price Is Right, Touchgrind, Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, SimCity, Bejeweled 2, Monopoly, Warfare Incorporated, and Amateur Surgeon. Not even all of those are big brand established names, which is amazing. Don't you think people are just pointing fingers at everything but their own game and marketing?

Cheers,
-Jon

Be happy that 0.99 is the minimum price, otherwise it would have gone even lower

aarku Wrote:I just don't believe in the "99 cent fiasco" one bit. There is plenty of software in the top 100 that sells for a lot more than 99 cents. ...

That is an *excellent* argument!

Thanks for replies!
Very interesting discussion.

aarku Wrote:I just don't believe in the "99 cent fiasco" one bit.

What is it that you don't believe? We know the average price has gone down, I have seen many occurrences of halving a price giving greater overall revenue, and conversely doubling a price giving less revenue. We also know that the top 100 is based on number of downloads, and not revenue, and that purely being in the top 100 gives more sales due to the massive visibility it creates.

These are all facts. From this I came to the conclusion that prices are falling and will continue to fall and that the top 100 based on download counts is at least partly to blame. I also blame the interfaces in iTunes and on the App Store for making it too difficult to find apps that aren't already popular or released yesterday.

aarku Wrote:Don't you think people are just pointing fingers at everything but their own game and marketing?

Game quality and marketing combined are still the biggest factor, for sure. It's not all doom and gloom

Ah, took a bit to go through my twitter archives for the link: http://forums.macworld.com/message/682535#682535

Quote:Promotion costs money, sometime even more than application development and it very risky to invest into promotion with current App Store avarage pricing. I have attached an example I think will be pretty familiar to any small software developer.

1. Assume one copy of your application costs $4.99 (which is pretty high price tag for the App Store and you will get only $4,99*0,7 = $3,5 from any application copy sold).

2. One month advertising on one of the major Macintosh web sites will cost you $4000 a month per 200 000 baner appearances. It means that you should sell more than one 1000 copies of your application just to cover your expences.

3. Your banners has 1% CTR (it very high click through rate for a banner). In that case 2000 people will click on your add.

4. Assume that 10% of these people will buy your app. It's extreamly high number, I have never seen conversion rate for people who clicked on a advertising more than 3%.

5. You wil get 2000*0,1*4,99*0,7 = $700. You lose $1300.

That is why App Store structure is so important for the small application developer who produces high quality staff and not another lighter application.

Marketing and PR is important, but for the moment word of mouth and the Top 100 lists are by far the most important factors in an app's success. And for the moment it's easier to get to the top of the lists with a 99 cent app than a $4.99 (or whatever) app.

There's nothing wrong with 99 cent apps, but if Apple wants larger developers to make bigger and better apps they need to improve the store.

See also: http://www.improvetheappstore.com/