interesting stat re app market - my games
Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/interesting stat re app market - my games
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| Hello all. I've released four games recently on the android market and noticed something which I thought I'd share. One of my games had over 700 downloads in a very short space of time but consistently rated poorly - average 2 stars while my other older games have each had less than 200 downloads, but rate higher. Unfortunately the only people who typically provide comments are those who experience problems. Also for some reason most of my downloads are outside of English speaking countries so for some reason they're not as popular in the us as they are in other parts of the world. Just thought I'd share some musings on this. |
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| interesting. any common reason that you can point out why it might interest people in other countries and why such a poor rating? can you name the games and the corresponding ratings? can you provide or do you have any statistics of downloads per country? it could be good If a pattern could be stablished and then determine which country was best for what applications. Emphasis on advertising to that specific country/ies could be made or even translate to make it more attractive to potential customers. |
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| what genre of games were they? |
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| Games are here: (along with ratings) Genre - action/arcade https://market.android.com/search?q=soniq&so=1&c=apps No idea why non English speaking countries are the most popular ones for my games. I do have statistics of downloads per country, but I don't think I'll share them here yet. What I find strange though is that Flames of Vengeance received 700 downloads in a very short space of time while Blastoids and Tac-Star hung around on less than 100 downloads for months. However after releasing Flames of Vengeance the other products saw another 100+ downloads in a short space of time (possibly because I have links to our other games within each game). from Matt |
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| I'm less concerned about sales breakdowns and more concerned about compatibility issues. Several of your reviews suggest that the games simply didn't work. Have you had any luck finding out the causes? |
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| Yes I agree - there have been compatibility issues with several games. The only thing I can think of is that for some of these games I am loading too many resources. The two games that have had the compatibility issues have had either a lot of images, or large images (1024x1024). Yet there doesn't seem to be an obvious way for me to detect the user's VRAM available to warn them before hand that the app won't work on their phone - assuming that is the reason (which I'm fairly confident it is). For example - one of my earlier games (under a different android account) only worked on my boss' phone after I halved the number of images..before then it would crash immediately on loading, but the error message would only flash up for a second making it difficult to determine what the error was. |
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| Judging from the code LoadImage would return a null reference if the load fails, so it should be possible to catch the problem and display an error or fallback in some way. |
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| double post |
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| Thanks for bringing this up. I don't know if a LoadImage will bomb out if the OpenGL texture runs out of memory, since I believe it doesn't load the image into video memory until DrawImage. Plus, I read somewhere that OpenGLES uses regular memory. But how much? On iPhone it looks like 24MB: http://developer.apple.com/library/iOS/#documentation/3DDrawing/Conceptual/OpenGLES_ProgrammingGuide/OpenGLESPlatforms/OpenGLESPlatforms.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008793-CH106-SW3 Android ADB dump info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4659655/opengl-es-texture-memory And I believe texture sizes are limited to 2048x2048, but depends on the hardware. THere are ways to look this up through OpenGL. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2093594/opengl-extensions-available-on-different-android-devices |
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| I think you are right Adam. The game loads without error but running out of memory error occurs on draw. However for my game flames of vengeance there doesnt seem to be any further cuts I can make to the graphic quality. Would much prefer the market to provide a way to restrict or filter based on device specs other than just by device name.. |
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| You could try limiting for larger screens, OpenGL2.0, or even try using OpenGL texture compression and limit based on that-- using the manifest.xml file. http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/market-filters.html |
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| Ill give you some feedback, Looking at the little icons for each game flames of vengeance looks like an original game and the name Blastoids suggests an asteroids clone. Tac Star has a bad looking icon (sorry :) ) so maybe you could change that? TacStar deluxe has a good looking icon does that get a lot more views that TacStar? |
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| Hi slenkar, thanks for the feedback. Tac Star Deluxe has had a much higher download rate than the original - the icon for the original will be in a change released this coming Friday. Yes - I realise now that the name for games is very important on the android market since that is the primary source of hits when doing a search for games on the market app. |
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| For comparison, I'm from Brazil and I buy such games for my iPad site because the U.S. Apple site here still has a few games / applications, this may be the biggest reason of foreign interest in your games. |
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| i have one rhetoric and stupid question: how can i be informed about Your product ? Where i can find information about those game ? and why link goes to mfg company ? Because i found it only via this post. :( - buy 3 or 4 devices and use them for tests - less problems with compatibility - record some movie about making of ..... and post it on you tube - record some movie about... it will be released on ... before even game is made - make some noise on the forums, make video about it on you tube from gameplay, make a web page and link it everywhere - make some simpler icon without name and paste the product banner everywhere including link in your avatar in different forums... or just pay XXXX$ someone to design it for you - try to catch some semiprofessional dev team with web page and post it there - first make same noise, then check market then make the game this pure sales / cost approach used by my company (in that i worked not my private) of course in IT - make a blog or own community, make account on twitter / facebook whatever - post some stupid jokes / demotivatores about is with hidden logo or something to get it known by people - design your app for continuous updates in other words make some semiprofessional marketing, it takes a lot of time but it cost You nothing, build your brand. sorry i wanted to help, i think such things as above are obvious |
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