Running Pixel:

Murudai:

Cool, I sold another 419 copies of my game over the 27th and 28th.

Hi Murudai, I'm happy for your success, but I have a doubt, looks like you're transforming the 100%, is it the true? Or (someone did this mistake) are looking at the overral downloads numbers?
With a rate of 30% (and it is reaaaaaally good) you're downloading 700 copies/day.

It's very possible. My game just launched, so I really only have 1 day's worth of data, but just yesterday I had 1783 downloads of NextWar, and 192 purchases. And Solar is much more popular than my game.

My congratulations go to Murudai, on all your success! I hope I can reach even a fraction of your sales!

Adrian Tsai:

It's very possible. My game just launched, so I really only have 1 day's worth of data, but just yesterday I had 1783 downloads of NextWar, and 192 purchases. And Solar is much more popular than my game.

1783 downloads in a day?

what's happening? I think that even our best selling games since the day the numbers comes out hadn't such a good results.
The best number I saw was 60k downloads collected by a card game in several months (and after several resubmissions).

Now looks like everyone has at least 1000 downloads a day, this is good but this leads me to think that should be a better thing wait a bit before submitting my games. Being one the first trusting in CG was not a good thing for me.

Actually this thread has really made us rethink a lot of things about our game "Jonny Crush". We were ready to ship it last week but thankfully a reviewer caught a serious bug and we decided to pull it. Probably the most important thing we have learned from listening is that we hardly ever ask the player to buy the game. Instead we are too polite and let them play until the 8 minute timer goes off. The other thing is that the 8 minute time frame is too long and sales were better when at 4 minutes.

With these things in mind we are reworking our game and cutting the playtime down to 6 minutes, using the las two minutes to try and push the game. I'm not sure if we are going to upset the player but I definitely think we (myself included) are not selling our game and instead are letting the game sell itself.

Running Pixel:

Murudai:

Cool, I sold another 419 copies of my game over the 27th and 28th.

Hi Murudai, I'm happy for your success, but I have a doubt, looks like you're transforming the 100%, is it the true? Or (someone did this mistake) are looking at the overral downloads numbers?
With a rate of 30% (and it is reaaaaaally good) you're downloading 700 copies/day.

Trial downloads over the 27th and 28th was 1852 :) Don't worry, I have double, triple and quadruple checked these numbers and that is most certainly the purchase rate for Solar :)

Overall my game has a conversion rate of ~20-25%, which I think is quite remarkable. Some of these games have more downloads, but because of my great conversion rate I still get a lot of sales :)

Wow. Little bit of a suprise for me. I released my sales figures early on in the thread - calculated with open office. Ive just used the tutorial here at work on office 2003 and my figures are VERY different - Office 2003 makes you richer!

I need to double check my figures but it looks like my first attempt i may not have included december!

the stats now stand at:

15435 demos downloaded
2503 purchases

500600 points (2503 times 200pts)

according to http://www.mspconverter.com/ that £4255.10 - after microsofts 30% that makes £2978.57 for me.

thats a lot better than i first thought and its not quite life changing (dont we all hope we can quit our jobs and do this full time) but its certainly a lot better than a kick in the teeth!

Here are mine then:

Downloads	13359
Sales	395
Points earnt	79000
(if 200 Points = £1.70)		£671.50	-30%	=	£470.05

The best way to convert from MS Points to currency is use the defined exchange (it's in the terms of submission you agreed to) of $0.0121 USD per MS Point. Using that conversion (and taking 30% off for Microsoft) you have made $669.13 USD which (according to Google) is about £472.38, so your math wasn't far off. That or Google is off. :)

Will be interesting to see which definition of the exchange rate gets used, and when exactly the conversion will take place.

Here's hoping the GBP continues to be utterly weak. American colleagues, go out and start spending so the dollar with strengthen and then we can be better off on our side of the pond :)

Oesis Inc:

Actually this thread has really made us rethink a lot of things about our game "Jonny Crush". We were ready to ship it last week but thankfully a reviewer caught a serious bug and we decided to pull it. Probably the most important thing we have learned from listening is that we hardly ever ask the player to buy the game. Instead we are too polite and let them play until the 8 minute timer goes off. The other thing is that the 8 minute time frame is too long and sales were better when at 4 minutes.

With these things in mind we are reworking our game and cutting the playtime down to 6 minutes, using the las two minutes to try and push the game. I'm not sure if we are going to upset the player but I definitely think we (myself included) are not selling our game and instead are letting the game sell itself.

And here I was complaining about having a time limit at all (way back when XBLCG first launched)... I have already decided to cut back the 8 minute trial back to 7 minutes, just to do my own upselling.  But now I am thinking of cutting it back to 6 minutes or maybe even to 4... This is all new to me, so it's hard.

Oesis Inc:

The other thing is that the 8 minute time frame is too long and sales were better when at 4 minutes.

By the way, how do you know this?

Matthew Doucette:

Oesis Inc:

Actually this thread has really made us rethink a lot of things about our game "Jonny Crush". We were ready to ship it last week but thankfully a reviewer caught a serious bug and we decided to pull it. Probably the most important thing we have learned from listening is that we hardly ever ask the player to buy the game. Instead we are too polite and let them play until the 8 minute timer goes off. The other thing is that the 8 minute time frame is too long and sales were better when at 4 minutes.

With these things in mind we are reworking our game and cutting the playtime down to 6 minutes, using the las two minutes to try and push the game. I'm not sure if we are going to upset the player but I definitely think we (myself included) are not selling our game and instead are letting the game sell itself.

And here I was complaining about having a time limit at all (way back when XBLCG first launched)... I have already decided to cut back the 8 minute trial back to 7 minutes, just to do my own upselling.  But now I am thinking of cutting it back to 6 minutes or maybe even to 4... This is all new to me, so it's hard.

How many XBLA games do you know which do their upselling only through a time limit? I.e. where the only limit on the trial version is some sort of time limit? Not very many...
A time limit is probably the worst limitation you can have in a trial version. There may be a few games where the nature of the game just doesn't make any other type of limit feasable, but most games would be better of if there were no time limit at all in the trial, but instead only other types of limits: Certain game modes/difficulties/levels/puzzles not available etc. Now, the time limit is a necessity imposed by MS to avoid "free" games, but using the imposed time limit (or even a shorter self-programmed time limit) as the only trial limitation is not a good solution. And what if MS decides to cut this time again, let's say to 5 min? And you have just programmed your game to last 6 min plus 2 min of upsell? Where would your upsell go then?
No, it is always better to have other limitations in your game as good upsell reasons. Program the game as if the trial were not time limited at all, that's how I would do it...

Doc

He probably based it on Nick's statement that Bloc stopped selling the day the limit went up to 8 minutes. But that of course is a problem of the game not being designed with an 8 minute trial in mind. And for every Bloc there is a Blow, that game probably sold lots of units more once people were no longer thrown out of the trial half way through the tutorial. :)

Your correct about Nick's statement and I believe I read it in another thread.

My son has been an avid gamer on the Xbox for years and I sat and watched him one day as he was checking out some demos. What I noticed is that after he played for a while he would exit the game using the guide button instead of the menus. Too my horror he told me that everyone he knows exits trials like this. I realized instantly the problem we were going to have, we only tried to sell the game once the player exited the game without purchasing it. Without someone like a used car salesman (figuratively) telling him how great the game is he would never buy the game.

Like the marketing people say, sell the sizzle not the steak!

Oesis Inc:

Your correct about Nick's statement and I believe I read it in another thread.

My son has been an avid gamer on the Xbox for years and I sat and watched him one day as he was checking out some demos. What I noticed is that after he played for a while he would exit the game using the guide button instead of the menus. Too my horror he told me that everyone he knows exits trials like this. I realized instantly the problem we were going to have, we only tried to sell the game once the player exited the game without purchasing it. Without someone like a used car salesman (figuratively) telling him how great the game is he would never buy the game.

Like the marketing people say, sell the sizzle not the steak!

Maybe I'm giving our audience too much credit, but am I in the minority in thinking that upsell messages do nothing except annoy people? I can understand the point if you're holding back cool features, but otherwise I think they're a bit of a blunt tool. I know I for one have never been 'talked into' an XBLA purchase by an upsell message, but then I'm not the average consumer I guess.

That, and as Oesis points out, there's probably a ton of kids who might be influenced by such marketing. Hmm...

Yeah, it really annoys me when a game tries to force you to buy it when you exit.  Stick a Buy option on the starting menu, but when I exit the game; it's usually because I don't like your game.

I don't know if this is the best way, but at least for my game, I was planning on doing something at the beginning.  When you start the game, a message will appear along the lines of "This is the trial game.  In the trial game, you can only play the first 3 stages.  Buy the full version for 200 pts for access to all 20 stages."  No forcing the player to buy anything, just letting the player know why they should buy the full version (assuming they like the demo).

RainbowDespair:

"This is the trial game.  In the trial game, you can only play the first 3 stages.  Buy the full version for 200 pts for access to all 20 stages."  No forcing the player to buy anything, just letting the player know why they should buy the full version (assuming they like the demo).

This is the only way it should be done. If things were perfect every community game had an advertising screen showing what you get in the full version which pops up after the trial time exceeds. Just like it's been with game demos for ten years now. Obviously in CG you're pretty much kicked back to the dashboard after the trial time so either you limit your game to six or seven minutes and then stop with an advertising screen or like you want to do it you start with such a screen. Obviously in general advertising works better if you just played the game and want to continue playing. But right now only a hand full of games tell you what you get if you buy the game. And that's not selling your game at all.

Pandapadawan:

uditha sampath:

What u think the sales numbers would be in the games like this?

Colosseum

Mithra - Episode 1, Chapter 1

Valhyre

I think the adjectives are bad (Colosseum), below expectations (Mithra) and horrendous (Valhyre). I'd be surprised if Valhyre sold more than 100 copies because the first release was so bad. Mithra has to have suffered from the one room trial. And both Mithra and Colosseum are in a league with other pro studios like Novaleaf and Big Mommy's - so I highly doubt they will have the earnings they need to cover the costs. The big problem with episodic content is obviously that while you do have returning customers the overall sell rate will decline for the next parts. Take a look at The Maw: 80,000 people bought that (which is pretty average for XBLA and can't be called a success), 7,000 people bought the first DLC. 3,000 people bought the second DLC. Guess how many will buy the last DLC in late April?

I dont plan on releasing sales numbers, but I will say Valhyre sold more than 100 copies so you can be surprised.  As to the comment of the first release being so bad, Valhyre's major fault in regards to Community Games is that it is strictly a multiplayer game,  we knew going into community games our target audience would not be found here and did not plan on any major break throughs.  That being said, the community for it is growing and an average of 10 to 15 people a night join the games I host so I am happy with that.

My "Buy Now" is an option in the Main Menu that looks a bit like a web site advert. I didn't get a huge ratio between downloads and sales, so maybe there is a better way of doing it? or maybe there are other reasons.

First of all we want to thank you all of you who are sharing your selling info. It has been very interesting to study this numbers.

We want also share our own info:

Game: Planet Delta
Price: 400 MP
Release date: November
Downloads: 7509
Purchases: 92
Rate: 1,24 %

As you can see, the main problem is the conversion rate. We think that this can be due 2 main points: wrong pricing (it is difficult to fix a good price if you want to be the first) and our game itself (type of game mainly, there is no multiplayer feature, and the quality that can always be better).

We will change the price and follow what happens in our blog.

We thought we'd add our sales figures as there's a lot of doom and gloom going around. 

Downloads: 46405
Sales: 9153
Conversion Rate: 20%
Money To Us: ~$32,000

We're more than happy with the income from just 4 months.  We'd like to have got more downloads but I guess if you don't like word games you won't download something called Word Soup.  The opportunity is certainly there and I think XBLC is getting an unfair comparison to iPhone.  A very very small %age of iPhone devs are making the money that hits the headlines.  And remember, with the iPhone there's one place to get apps\games and that's the app store.  On an Xbox we're competing with XBLA and retail games too.

Anyway, keep your heads up people.

Fuzzy Bug:

Downloads: 46405
Sales: 9153
Conversion Rate: 20%
Money To Us: ~$32,000

Amazing! Congratulations!
And thanks for letting us know. It seems like most developers who are expected to have big numbers prefer to stay silent.

Fuzzy Bug:

Downloads: 46405
Sales: 9153
Conversion Rate: 20%
Money To Us: ~$32,000

Thanks for sharing! It's encouraging to finally see the 'more than the average yearly income' that Microsoft has been talking about.

I'm just hoping that Solar can keep going and pull in those kind of numbers. Probably not, but I can always hope.

Fuzzy Bug:

We thought we'd add our sales figures as there's a lot of doom and gloom going around. 

Downloads: 46405
Sales: 9153
Conversion Rate: 20%
Money To Us: ~$32,000

Impressive. Did you make most of your sales at the launch or did Word Soup sell well over a longer period?

@Fuzzy Bug

Congrats on those numbers =)

As a follow-up question to "were most of the sales at launch," how is it doing right now?  Snake360 only seems to be moving <10 units per day at this point; I figure now that it's out of New Arrivals and Most Popular, it pretty much relies on word of mouth and random visitors to the Web site.

Well by my count it seems like none of the 800 point games have released sales data.  While I won't give my exact numbers, I will say that we have sold more than 250 copies in the 1 month that our game has been out.  I was really worried about the 800 point price, and now I am wondering if I should have gone lower.  Our conversion rate was low, < 4%, and we seem to have hit a steady amount of sales the last few weeks.  I wonder if my conversion rate would have more than doubled at 400 points.  The main problem I see is how the popularity ranks and sales charts hurt 800 point games.  Our first week of sales was pretty good, but we didn't make the top ten on units sold at all.  Regardless of that we made over 1000$ take home the first week.  Looking at the numbers I find it hard to believe that 1000$ in sales won't make you into a weekly top ten list if you are a 200 point game.  I think the top ten lists should be based on cash flow made and not the units sold.  We that are investing the extra time and money into 800 point games get stiffed by sales charts that pretty much cater to 200 point games. 

My overall analysis is that games with lots of content don't work as well on this service.  I have had many customers report taking over 20 hours to beat our game in one of the 3 career paths you can play.  Yet if I had made the game 4 hours long I don't think our sales data would have been affected at all.  Most of our time was spent stretching out the game to make it that long.  Our game now sits around 80-120 in popularity on the daily XBLCG charts, but we are still making more actual money per week then some games have made since november.  To me this setup seems to really hurt the 800 point games.

With these lessons learned, our next game will not be a standard Console-Style RPG, but an episodic one.  I think that format will work better on XBLCGs.