Re: Ridiculous, vindictive review department
Posted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 9:55 am
I agree with the previous few posts about a cheaper price, at this point now that I am back from my business trip it's too late to affect it. We've dropped out of the top 25 in our categories completely and are rapidly approaching the big ZERO in sales. Hope it doesn't get to that point, but it might. Here's the short analysis for people who might be curious on App Store Economics:
1) Ending a sale price on Sunday night/Monday AM border is suicide, due to the normal drop in sales you get after a weekend at the same price. Doing this accelerates the problem dramatically.
2) Not many people buy something in the week after it goes "off-sale"
3) RT, being a unique, retro gaming experience means that our market is already a subset of app-store users. Further, that subset of users is broken up into groups that would:
3A) Buy a great roguelike at any price, ie- $2.99 and up. We've probably saturated this group, all of you great people here
3B) People who might be willing to try it for less, $0.99 or perhaps $1.99 (we saw a lot of $0.99 people join during the sale!)
3C) People who would never pay for a roguelike and would rather play the seriously underwhelming free version than support a paid roguelike (even if it was months of work and obviously well done).
3D) People who would be willing to buy if they could try a lite version first.
So, I feel like I'm laying out the business in front of my customers here, but it helps you if people get a bit of perspective on the App Store's "get rich quick view". We obviously had no illusions of getting rich quick, and I picked rogue for the love of the game and genre. This was basically to make the game I always wanted to play, and if some others enjoyed it too, then great! I did have some hopes of seeing enough interest to be able to jump into this full time though...
From my readings and discussions with other developers we had a decent freshman run here. So many people put out games or apps and see 0-5 sales a day. We were fortunate enough to do better than those poor souls and learn a lot on the way, but this one game won't let us quit our day jobs and focus on iPhone gaming!
I think there's still a bit of life left in Rogue Touch, even if we do hit zero new sales. We've got a few great features planned that could turn things on their head. I may need the help of everyone here when it's time for that final push to lift RT back out of obscurity!
1) Ending a sale price on Sunday night/Monday AM border is suicide, due to the normal drop in sales you get after a weekend at the same price. Doing this accelerates the problem dramatically.
2) Not many people buy something in the week after it goes "off-sale"
3) RT, being a unique, retro gaming experience means that our market is already a subset of app-store users. Further, that subset of users is broken up into groups that would:
3A) Buy a great roguelike at any price, ie- $2.99 and up. We've probably saturated this group, all of you great people here
3B) People who might be willing to try it for less, $0.99 or perhaps $1.99 (we saw a lot of $0.99 people join during the sale!)
3C) People who would never pay for a roguelike and would rather play the seriously underwhelming free version than support a paid roguelike (even if it was months of work and obviously well done).
3D) People who would be willing to buy if they could try a lite version first.
So, I feel like I'm laying out the business in front of my customers here, but it helps you if people get a bit of perspective on the App Store's "get rich quick view". We obviously had no illusions of getting rich quick, and I picked rogue for the love of the game and genre. This was basically to make the game I always wanted to play, and if some others enjoyed it too, then great! I did have some hopes of seeing enough interest to be able to jump into this full time though...
From my readings and discussions with other developers we had a decent freshman run here. So many people put out games or apps and see 0-5 sales a day. We were fortunate enough to do better than those poor souls and learn a lot on the way, but this one game won't let us quit our day jobs and focus on iPhone gaming!
I think there's still a bit of life left in Rogue Touch, even if we do hit zero new sales. We've got a few great features planned that could turn things on their head. I may need the help of everyone here when it's time for that final push to lift RT back out of obscurity!