TnTGaming:

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.

RainbowDespair:

I don't think it's so much that players won't appreciate a game with longevity, but rather that they prefer quality over quantity.  A really polished 4-5 hour Action/RPG will probably sell a lot better than a decent 20 hour Action/RPG.  But yeah, I think a 200 point game with 3 hours of gameplay will probably do better than a 400 points game with 8 hours, for example.  I also agree with you about pricing: from the look of things, 800 point prices are a really bad idea.  If your game is good enough to warrant that kind of price tag, you'd probably be better off trying to get an XBLA deal.

Your sales do fill me with confidence over the market for RPGs on Community Games.  If you were able to sell a few hundred copies in a month despite the really high price tag & the rough edges (no offense intended; there are a lot of good things about your game, but it is a little unpolished), then it looks like an inexpensive, well polished RPG with a bit of marketing could really do well.

EDIT: The comment about varying difficulties in the trial is a good one.  I was thinking about just making the first 3 stages (out of 20) of the game playable in the trial, but I think now, I'll make the 1st, 5th, and 10th playable (or something similar) so that people can get a good idea of the difficulty progression as well as see some of the later skills & abilities.

Devilduck:

TnTGaming:

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.

Its a shame but I have to agree with you.  The system is skewed toward the 200 and 400 point games.

Devilduck:

Its a shame but I have to agree with you.  The system is skewed toward the 200 and 400 point games.

Matthew Doucette:

I think it would be cool if the "most popular" list was actually a "best conversion" list (conversion from trials to full game purchases).  But the XNA team can do the math on this and see what that list would actually be.  A best converting list are all games that gamers are most apt to purchase after playing the trial, which is an optimization of their time.  I wish so badly I could see the XBLCG data, to calculate what this list would look like.

Matthew Doucette:

I think it would be cool if the "most popular" list was actually a "best conversion" list (conversion from trials to full game purchases).  But the XNA team can do the math on this and see what that list would actually be.  A best converting list are all games that gamers are most apt to purchase after playing the trial, which is an optimization of their time.  I wish so badly I could see the XBLCG data, to calculate what this list would look like.

Deej:

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.

DXL540:

Deej:

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.

My current plan is to see if I can write my ScreenManager so that all GameScreens draw everything to a RenderTarget or ViewPort.  If TrialMode is detected the plan would be to slightly shrink the main target/viewport to make room for a banner at the bottom or top.  It would contain the obligitory "Trial Mode" and "Press Back to Purchase" messages.  It would also contain a text slide-show describing the features of the game.  I think humor could work well here.

The idea is that the trial mode is never interrupted (yes, annoying).  I'm also not relying on a fixed trial time.

Sound plausible?

Matt

Foosball For Two

Pandapadawan:

Nice charts but shouldn't it say M T W T F S S instead of S T T S M W F?

Matthew Doucette:

Squimball, can you elaborate on any reaons (besides the obvious) of why the sales were high at first and then dropped?  I mean, if you have any specifics of where your game was advertised at each phase to share with us.  And, good job.  Congrats!