App Store vs Android Market
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/App Store vs Android Market
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| I do like the App Store, then I also like the Android Market.... but which is better? There's only one way to find out.... ask! Released Crime Solitaire on the App Store a while back as an exercise in damage limitation, and it's done a couple hundred sales but it's kinda disappointing because I would have needed about 4,000 to recoup the cost of time invested in doing it. Anyhoo... I dropped the price of CS for December 2011, and a few people mentioned that they'd fancy an Android version. So for anybody who has released a product on both markets, how do sales compare? |
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| I've submitted on all 3 markets (Android, iPhone and Windows) but it's still too early to say anything. Anyway I post my stats here as soon as I get them, including all sales, Admob, downloads and so on: http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=1941 |
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| Just to give you some figures: Pirates Solitaire (currently set at $1) Android installs: 100-500 Pirates TriPeaks (free) Android installs: 10,000 - 50,000 iOS payments: One payment of $150... still waiting for the rest up to $120 Android payments: $170 - around $10 a month... Now if I had cross-promoted them it might have been a better outcome :( My advise, do a free version with a couple of levels - call it CS lite or something and do the full version and cross-promote! You've got the code base all done and Android is so much easier and cheaper to deploy to so its worth ago... Also do a Flash version and give it to BFG... it does slightly help ;) |
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| Ah right, BFG. Never thought of that, thanks! |
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| Aren't Flash versions very easy to steal/repackage though? Piracy I can |
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| I'm not on iOS yet, but have been on Android for almost 2 years now. I have yet to share any detailed info with anyone, but I can say it's been well worth it for me. I've seen many reports of really low numbers, and I can at least share that this is not always the case. |
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| therevills, no putting even a little banner in lite version of PS on Android was your biggest mistake. |
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| The Chrome web/app Store would be worth looking at also. Even just to have the demo or full version with links to the mobile versions. |
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| So far I'm very surprised about the Windows market. Even though it has only 1.5% market share I had already 18 sales last week compared to 7 for Android (iPhone still in review). |
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| Games there are quite a lot of factors obviously, but as a general rule of thumb the AppStore typically out-sells Android Market by at least an order of magnitude. |
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| My latest stats for Android and iOS http://yfrog.com/gyppt4j As you can see iOS is blowing Android out of the water. Disappointed actually as it was SO much easier to get game live on Android. Anyway overall sales are currently poor. (nothing like on casual portals) However lite version is coming out tomorrow for both platforms (upsells to full version) and WP7 tomorrow so I'll report back on that soon. Also there are standard and HD versions of each games. I should have a good idea about how well such a game can do on mobile without BFG marketing it and with my own crappy marketing skillz. @therevills Wow that's great Android sales, how did you promote it? |
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| @therevills Wow that's great Android sales, how did you promote it? Installs... not sales ;) And thats over 6 months too. |
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| The Pirate Solitaire 100-500 was at $1 though right? So how did you get 10K-50K installs of the free one? Also why the number range? Thanks sorry to ask so many questions :-) |
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| The Pirate Solitaire 100-500 was at $1 though right? Yep... So how did you get 10K-50K installs of the free one? No idea - lol! Also why the number range? Its whats displayed on the Android Market, when you log into the Android Developer Console you get the exact numbers... Pirate Solitaire: 109 total installs (users) 64 net installs (devices) Pirate TriPeaks Solitaire: 15,693 total installs (users) 5,700 net installs (devices) Thanks sorry to ask so many questions :-) No problem :) I've been meaning to update both versions to use the latest version of Monkey and to add an advert to TriPeaks to point to PS... |
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| Ha cool! Thx for sharing. Damien Sturdy said that total installs includes updates and net installs is the real figure. |
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| I just released Lite versions for iOS/Android/WP7 and an online version on Kongregate so we'll see what happens. Postmortem in Jan. http://greyaliengames.com/blog/try-holiday-bonus-for-free/ |
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| In my experience the Android market is much harder to market for; our games are easily, in downloads and revenue, eclipsing the Android market counter parts. Currently it seems that Google is not really helping Indie developers much while Apple is; we have been getting featured all over the world in the Appstore while, with exactly the same game and no competition, the market did nothing for us. Stats; Appstore +4 million dls / Market +100k dls Quite a difference. We are now only releasing Android as a 'me too' option, but if Google doesn't fix their system which heavily biases the big publishers, I don't see much happening there. |
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| Trapit on the iOS store: Still haven't been paid but I'm near the threshold. That's after about 11 months :) Android: Didn't developer a version for it, but I could have probably written TrapIt in Monkey in 1/4 the time, and had it multiplatform. |
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