Neither of mine are in the app store any more, but apps with similar names are.
Santa's Last Stand - 3-4 mos - $250 since 4 years ago, free + 2.99 paid
Bank Defense - 3-4 months, - $100 since 4 years ago, free + 1.99 paid (approx--I don't remember)
mobile game market is _hard_ unless you're flight control/angry birds/candy crush. The market is saturated and Zynga (for example) has entire teams of people to make sure consumer dollars flow to them and not us (indies).
>mobile game market is _hard_ unless you're flight control/angry birds/candy crush.
Is there any angle to get around this, for even modest sales? Most people here seem to be saying that they barely cover cost, if that. Very discouraging :-( There has to be something that small guys can do that big guys can't.
at a tangent: one thing I miss is "Under the Radar" from this Indonesian website. Here's a sample page. Google Translate works well enough. There's a bunch of good games scattered through those pages and most of them don't use horrible freemium models.
Made about £15 with dino sprint. It was never really about the money tbh, I just wanted people to enjoy something that I had created. It has 10,000+ downloads which im extremely happy with.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wockawocka...
I'm in same ballpark, I have ads from which I made about $20 with 26k downloads (and 1.4k current installs), and I have in-game purchases from which I made 0. It seems some people really enjoy it, and give a good review, others post something like 'garbage' and give it a 1 star review https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mildspring...
I launched a turn taking two player real-time board game in HN 4 years ago, with zero returns so far. It took 3 months to build the web app, another 3 months for android app. But, lots of PR for the stunt. It is still up. 30K game instances so far and 3K players.
Recently I am having thoughts like should I relaunch this ? But won't want to do it without someone to look it as a business. This game feels like Chess but it is quick to learn, setup and finish.
Interestingly, I do collect about 10% of my visitors from mobile on my sudoku webapp, which was NOT designed for mobile. A mobile version would be possible but since it doesn't make much I haven't bothered. Still, it's better than the zero some report for their mobile game :)
App discovery was one of the main reasons I decided to learn webapp first. Unless you make a graphic heavy game, eventually HTML5 apps will perform on mobile :)
Made about $5000 from in-app purchases and about $4000 from ads across 3 games. All free games at http://mugalon.com/ .
I am doing this on the side while freelancing (or having a day job before) as income. Most games did not have any monetization for most of their life and I am sure I could get this up one order of magnitude if I put in some work.
My free game (with ads) hasn't made enough to cover the dev license.. I think mobile games are one of those things where you either make the top 10 or languish in purgatory.
I thought I put together a decent game, but I didn't have any knowledge of how to market, and no real desire to put the time in on that aspect. It made a sale a week for the first 2 years and is tapering off to a few sales per year. I think I will just drop it to free and eliminate the free version some time soon. Perhaps I should even release the source.
If you want to make money selling games you need to be prepared to put a lot of work in. Otherwise you should consider it to be buying lottery tickets which rarely works well.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 58.9 ms ] threadSanta's Last Stand - 3-4 mos - $250 since 4 years ago, free + 2.99 paid
Bank Defense - 3-4 months, - $100 since 4 years ago, free + 1.99 paid (approx--I don't remember)
mobile game market is _hard_ unless you're flight control/angry birds/candy crush. The market is saturated and Zynga (for example) has entire teams of people to make sure consumer dollars flow to them and not us (indies).
You might get lucky though! :-]
Is there any angle to get around this, for even modest sales? Most people here seem to be saying that they barely cover cost, if that. Very discouraging :-( There has to be something that small guys can do that big guys can't.
I would have taken a look at them (if they're on iOS).
https://id.techinasia.com/game-radar-zeen-tiny-acrobats-dan-...
Does anyone know anything similar?
Recently I am having thoughts like should I relaunch this ? But won't want to do it without someone to look it as a business. This game feels like Chess but it is quick to learn, setup and finish.
Play with AI here: http://obaghchal.com/computer
I just clicked through and spent a few minutes clicking around ... I couldn't find the rules anywhere without clicking through to Wikipedia.
http://sudokuisland.com
App discovery was one of the main reasons I decided to learn webapp first. Unless you make a graphic heavy game, eventually HTML5 apps will perform on mobile :)
I am doing this on the side while freelancing (or having a day job before) as income. Most games did not have any monetization for most of their life and I am sure I could get this up one order of magnitude if I put in some work.
Made it in about a week: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smashcorp....
going to buy myself an ice cream.
Highest Positions in US App Store.
All Games US #54
Adventure (Games) #7
Arcade (Games) #23
Board (Games) #4
Music (Games) #2
Revenue
$18,430 Interstitials - Static & Video
$5,180 Banner Ads
$1,515 IAP to Remove Ads
=============
TOTAL $25,125
If you want to make money selling games you need to be prepared to put a lot of work in. Otherwise you should consider it to be buying lottery tickets which rarely works well.
http://tactitionprogramming.com/oceancommotion.html iPad only