One iPhone Developer’s Lessons Learned: More Marketing, Lower Prices
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We’ve all heard the stories of the small-time developer that hit it big in the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) App Store. There was even talk that the App Store had democratized the way that apps were distributed, flattening out the advantages that a big time games publisher might have over a lone developer working on an app outside of his day job. But now it appears that as the App Store gets increasingly crowded, we’ll hear a lot less of those stories.
SEE ALSO: To Boost AppStore Sales, iPhone Apps Need To Crack Top Fifty
In a post titled, “The Numbers Post (aka Brutal Honesty),” on his blog, Owen Goss, a Canadian developer and former Electronic Arts (NSDQ: ERTS) Canada programmer who started a video games studio called Streaming Colour last year, breaks out the numbers for his first game, a color-matching puzzle game called Dapple, for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which debuted on the App Store in mid February and sells for $4.99. Twenty-four days and $32,000 later (the amount Goss spent to develop the game), he revealed that he has sold exactly 131 copies of the game worldwide. This, despite a strong review on gaming site Kotaku. To break even, he needs to sell 9,150.
What Goss learned, on the jump:
— Pricing pressure: Like his larger rivals, Goss is feeling the App Store $0.99 price point pressure. Despite having paid to ensure that the art, music and sound design were quality, Goss is discovering that at $4.99 “a lot of people are hesitant to buy the game, even after reading a great review.” He’s since submitted a free version, Dapple Lite, to the App Store for review. If its accepted, he is hoping that he will be able to entice users with the free demo version to upsell them to the paid-for version.
— App Store piracy issues: Dapple was cracked and uploaded to pirate sites less than 5 hours after it went live, Goss says. He is not sure though, how many pirated copies of Dapple are being played right now as he doesn’t track those metrics.
— Marketing: So much for the cream rising to the top. It’s clear that as discovery on the App Store gets increasingly difficult, marketing matters. As Goss muses, his one mistake was not hiring marketing experts to handle that aspect of the game cycle for Dapple.
Posted In: Entertainment, Games, Gadgets, Companies, Apple, iPhone
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