reubert Wrote:The risks can pay off. I'm not sure on the publisher at the time of first release, but The Sims is an example of a well known developer taking a risk, and it paying off massively.



For those interested in sales figures, in an interview with ComputerWorld magazine published today, I gave some statistics on Chopper sales.
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/devt...AF0034C867

The gist of the stats is over 20,000 downloads in the first month, currently roughly 500 a day.

The iPhone App Store is a huge opportunity, I hope all of you who can jump on it will do so.

Wow. 500 downloads a day?

You rock, buddy.

500 a day is an impressive number and is beating out my 3 apps in the store combined, you have my congratulations. However as a note to everyone here be very careful who you tell your sales numbers to. The market is becoming flooded and people are eager to clone your game and undersell you if they see it will be worth it.

When the creator of 2 across posted her numbers within a couple of weeks she had a dozen new competitors, I already have close to 10 competing games. It may be best to play your iPhone cards very close to your chest. The iPhone community is definitely not as friendly as the Mac development community is well known for, in my opinion partly because of the amount of money being passed around and because there is such a rush of windows programmers.

Just my 2 cents guys, happy coding. =D

I see where you are coming from, and was hesitant initially to publish numbers but in the end I couldn't think of any real reason not to.

If someone sees my figures and comes to the conclusion 'I will make a very similar app and make as much or more money' Then good luck to em. It was just as likely they would see it in the top 100 or see that SMB made millions and come to the same conclusion.

The only thing I was really concerned about is the impact of people I know personally having a better idea of my income. That does require serious thought, but I decided to be open as I felt worse about being deceptive or picky about who I told.

Thanks for the good wishes everyone

Kodex is right that it may foster unwanted competition, but I can't help but say that I greatly admire your wisdom (and courage) in divulging your sales stats. To me, honesty and good intentions are worth more than mere treasure. I know I personally will not forget that you did this.

I've already pointed a few friends to it and they've been quite shocked themselves. One, because of the shear magnitude, but Two, also because you shared the info in the first place. It must be human nature to think there is some great secret to share all the time. I know I've fought that myself. But the truth is that, no matter how hard everyone tries to wrap fire in paper, it ain't gonna last long. This market is going to flood, one way or another, and it's going to happen sooner than anyone wants. Might as well be cool about it, and that you have done well!

Lastly, my attitude is that, later on, the only people who will be making big money in the end are the ones who make great products. The window is still open to get an easy name out there for now, but it's gonna get a lot tougher soon! Being better is starting to matter more than being first. Once the copy-cats have had their run, the truly creative stuff will be all that matters.

Holy crap, dude, those numbers are phenomenal. Congrats- it's nice to see that even in the middle of a deluge of a billion frigging sudoku games and all that Jirbo garbage that an Indie with an original idea wins the day.

I'm glad the hysteria from the launch is over. Going forward I'm still confident that we'll see some more really cool and fun original stuff, but now I'm thinking it's going to be solely up to indie developers. It seems the bigger guys are focusing instead on porting over AAA titles (Force Unleashed) or looking to "alternative business models" (read: in-game ads in free apps.) In other words, other ways of capitalizing off of the lowest common denominator, instead of actually making a fun game.

Quote: Do you think the $7.99 price point is a good price? I can't decide whether to sell GL Golf for $4.99 and try to get it high in the top paid apps, or charge $7.99 like I originally wanted too. I think if I start out with 5 courses that might be enough to justify a higher price.

The sweet spot for iPhone feels like it's around the $5-8 range. I'm noticing a lot of $10 apps have dropped down to $7, and Chopper is doing great at $8. Personally, anything above $10 feels pricey to me and gives me pause, and anything below $5 feels cheap and junky and I'm likely to pass on it altogether.

Good point on the pricing, I'm going to stick with $7.99. There will always be people who complain about price, but they'll be a much smaller percentage than the people who buy the game.

I've had a few complaints about the price, I've also had a few people say they'd pay a lot more. Might seem obvious, but At 99c you have to sell 8x as many copies as an $8 app. There's no way to know but I highly doubt that would have happened with Chopper at 99c.

You'd also potentially end up with 8x the support emails. As long as everyone is happy that might not matter, but I dread the day I release a buggy update to all those customers!

Out of interest (if you are allowed to say of course) do you set the price separately in each market place or once and the App Store handles it?

With the recent drop in the value of Sterling against the US Dollar compared to a couple of months ago what was once a mid range price in the UK would now be a bargain in the US.

I see that Chopper is selling for £4.99 in the UK which is $9.21 in the US at today's exchange rate.

Being a UK based developer, when I release my iPhone game I'm wondering just sensitive to the currency markets I will be when selling an item at such a low price.

If you compare prices of various apps in different store regions (iTunes lets you change your store region) you should see the answer. All $7.99 USD apps are currently £4.99 / €5.99 etc.

On this note, David, did you notice any changes in your desktop version of Chopper when you released the iPhone version?

We're hoping that the iPhone version of ScribBall will draw some more attention to the desktop version.

AndyKorth Wrote:On this note, David, did you notice any changes in your desktop version of Chopper when you released the iPhone version?

We're hoping that the iPhone version of ScribBall will draw some more attention to the desktop version.

I never even thought of that, but I bet you're right. I wonder how many iPhone users have a mac, probably less than half but probably a decent percentage.

AndyKorth Wrote:On this note, David, did you notice any changes in your desktop version of Chopper when you released the iPhone version?

Sales of the desktop version roughly doubled, though there weren't very many to start with.