General

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Nick Gravelyn — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:28:53 GMT

And nobody heeded warning that off topic threads get locked. In the future, keep threads to one topic.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Aztec — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:28:05 GMT

Matthew Doucette:

That is a good idea. Have a separate place for apps and games. But, the point (and power) of XBLCG is to be open to all types of "games" and have creative freedom to create almost anything you want. So before we kick out the apps, maybe the solution is something I and a few others were suggesting is better: have a "top rated" list be the first thing newcomers see when they come to community games, not the "new arrivals" and not the "top 10" / "most popular" / "best sellers" (i think we should label them "best sellers" to be explicitly clear they are not necessarily the top rated games).

I really fail to see how having user rating would help the situation any. Isn't that what the users are doing right now with their money?
Every game has a trial after which the users must decide if they still think this game is worth it and being a top seller means that they did.

I want my games rise just like the next person but I think the most popular list would end up looking identical to the best seller list in the end.
Then most games would be stuck below 2 lists instead of just 1.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Barkers Crest — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:58:35 GMT

GloryHornetEmmo:
Word Soup has had some great sales, there game is also in Pubs across the UK. Another game with alternative advertising. It can be done.

Word Soup had a whole lot of #'s 1 and 2 going for it. Especially #1.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Star Gaming Network — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:17:00 GMT

danderham:
- Up to a couple of weeks ago when you uploaded a new update of your game it would appear at the top of the new arrivals list. I haven’t had to do an update for Tomato Blaster as so far no bugs have been found, therefore unlike some games I never had the advantage of jumping back up to the top of the list. From looking at the sales data being on the new arrivals list makes a massive difference to the trial download numbers. Did the people who did do a number of updates to their game find this to be true?

Our Golden Royal Blackjack had a lot of issues with its online game. That caused three updates with a fourth on its way. I can say from the numbers that it made no difference that the game re-appeared on the New Releases page. What seemed to help the game the most was being on the Top Ten list. Also for those interested the game sold about the same amount of units in December where it was available for two weeks that it did for the entire three months of January through March even though it was on the New Releases a couple of times in that period.

Patrick

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Running Pixel — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:57:44 GMT

GloryHornetEmmo:
Word Soup has had some great sales, there game is also in Pubs across the UK. Another game with alternative advertising. It can be done.

Sure, but WordSoup (great game) had the most extensive "xbox" advertising possible as well...

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

GloryHornetEmmo — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:39:37 GMT

Word Soup has had some great sales, there game is also in Pubs across the UK. Another game with alternative advertising. It can be done.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Running Pixel — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:30:52 GMT

Barkers Crest:
Everything else is far, far, far, far distant third.

Sniff... I agree..

Anyway, I did all the rest (videos, posts, reviews and interviews, google ads, viral marketing), now I'm trying something really really really mad to promote the game.

If it works I will share details here, if not ... ehmmm... finger crossed!

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Barkers Crest — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:22:13 GMT

xAD:
I don't have a game on there, but i feel compelled to say, as it keeps coming up, if the majority or entirety of your game's promotion is the time it spends on the Popular or New tab, you're doing it wrong.

Then you put out a game, then you contact tons of websites to do reviews of the game, then the websites give your game great reviews, then you visit tons of forums and promote your game, then you start a contest to promote your game, and then you get the download stats...

After all that happens, you'll come back to the forums and make a post stating having your game on the new release or popularity tab accounted for 90% of your sales.

Single most important factor of sales is having a unique and quality product ( BoxArt, Price, and Game Demo at the top of the list of a quality product ), the second factor is promotion on the Xbox or through Microsoft Marketing ( IE. Major Nelson ).

Everything else is far, far, far, far distant third.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

xAD — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:45:42 GMT

I don't have a game on there, but i feel compelled to say, as it keeps coming up, if the majority or entirety of your game's promotion is the time it spends on the Popular or New tab, you're doing it wrong.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

danderham — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:35:52 GMT

As some of you may of seen in the other sales thread my game (Tomato Blaster) hasn't done too well, mainly because the number of trial downloads from Feb 24th to 28th March was only 704, so despite the kind-of reasonable trial\sales ratio of 3.6% it only got 25 sales. As mentioned earlier this may have been partially due to the name but other than that I’ve got a couple of ideas on why it failed to get the initial trial downloads and would like your opinions:

- When Tomato Blaster was released the popularity rating order on the Marketplace wasn't working (http://forums.xna.com/forums/p/25887/149733.aspx#149733). The latest games appeared at the end of the popularity list, which meant Tomato Blaster was right at the bottom of the list for the first 2 weeks it was out. I’m wondering if other games which came out at a similar time to mine have had similar problems with getting interest in their game..?

- Up to a couple of weeks ago when you uploaded a new update of your game it would appear at the top of the new arrivals list. I haven’t had to do an update for Tomato Blaster as so far no bugs have been found, therefore unlike some games I never had the advantage of jumping back up to the top of the list. From looking at the sales data being on the new arrivals list makes a massive difference to the trial download numbers. Did the people who did do a number of updates to their game find this to be true?

Please don’t take this post as me complaining, I am truly just interested if this did make any difference to the download numbers, and I’m sure having a catchy name or a clever marketing method would make the most difference to the initial interest.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

The Zedox — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:21:04 GMT

I would like to know the stats on these sales (provided people give them out) after all this publicity (negative or not) on Joystiq, Kotaku, IGN, gamerbytes and such. It will be interesting to know if sales rise or even trials after it. Let's see if you cry a little less afterwards.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

The Zedox — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:03:35 GMT

I know everyone wants to cry but guess what, we are doing better than we were when we were just making games to make games. Anyways, don't worry, I'll save CG next year. :)

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Matthew Doucette — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:53:52 GMT

Pandapadawan:
I think we all agree that there are great games. Biology Battle, Word Soup, Weapon of Choice, Carneyvale, Easy Golf :), Solar, Slam, to name a few. But even these games aren't selling as well as they should. They did proper marketing, they offered contests, they were contest winners, they had lots of exposure and some even metacritic ratings. There's only so much you can do and if all that doesn't help with your overall downloads and sales, then it's probably not the games that are the problem, but the overall reception of Community Games.

I feel like, for the success of Duality: ZF to become a reality, we have to break the "Community Games Barrier", that exists between the average Xbox LIVE gamer and XBLCG, when it's a barrier that only Microsoft can break. If we were to be able to break that barrier, our game would have to be amazing and we would have to have enormous marketing power. We do not have such power. (Maybe collectively as a community we do?)

In my optimism: I am predicting that Microsoft will break this barrier down, bit by bit, and now I am just fortunate to be a part of this before it happens.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Pheel — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:53:47 GMT

Pandapadawan:

And at the moment I fear it will get even worse. Now there's 220 games. In a year there will be more than 500. Even with ratings it will be pretty difficult to dig through all that stuff because the marketplace lacks the search features that are needed. You'll be able to show the top rated Community Games, but you still will have to search 50+ top rated titles and sort out apps from games. The only way to enhance such useability with the given system is to take down content from the service under certain circumstances. For example why should games that have <10 trial downloads a week still be on there? They're just crowding the marketplace, probably even for the developer's next game. And having apps and games sit right next to each other is just stupid, because those attract different people.

We're not a managed portfolio. We will not pull games that don't have a lot of downloads.

Re: I got my sales numbers and want to cry thread

Pandapadawan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:39:58 GMT

Barkers Crest:
All this talk about achievements, games vs. non-games, etc..., little talk about learning from mistakes, understanding the market better, and building better products.

I think we all agree that there are great games. Biology Battle, Word Soup, Weapon of Choice, Carneyvale, Easy Golf :), Solar, Slam, to name a few. But even these games aren't selling as well as they should. They did proper marketing, they offered contests, they were contest winners, they had lots of exposure and some even metacritic ratings. There's only so much you can do and if all that doesn't help with your overall downloads and sales, then it's probably not the games that are the problem, but the overall reception of Community Games.

And at the moment I fear it will get even worse. Now there's 220 games. In a year there will be more than 500. Even with ratings it will be pretty difficult to dig through all that stuff because the marketplace lacks the search features that are needed. You'll be able to show the top rated Community Games, but you still will have to search 50+ top rated titles and sort out apps from games. The only way to enhance such useability with the given system is to take down content from the service under certain circumstances. For example why should games that have <10 trial downloads a week still be on there? They're just crowding the marketplace, probably even for the developer's next game. And having apps and games sit right next to each other is just stupid, because those attract different people.