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How (not) to sell your iOS app

stoicjesterstudios.com

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Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#31

Post by rkalla »

thestoicjester wrote: post #20
rkalla wrote: post #8

Here's what DID work for you -- summing up all those failures into a well written, entertaining and light-hearted article that is genuinely helpful to anyone else in the iOS game. Oh yea, and the front page of HN this time around. It sounded like you got your hands wet in a lot of different things. That doesn't necessarily mean you are going to retire on this game, but think how many people are aware of you now and w…

I appreciate all of this. The purpose here was to take a quote-unquote negative experience and spin it into something hopefully helpful for other devs, and myself (hello, hn front page). The plan has definitely been in the back of my head for a while to release a free ad-supported version. I just wanted to get this postmortem-type thing out the door first, and it's been difficult to force myself to sit down and take…

A few more thoughts:

- When you do put together the ad-supported version, include a mechanism for it to pull text from a web address and display it in a popup -- that way when you release Bullet Factory: Super-Bullet Edition, you can update that text file and all free versions will tell the players (pirated or otherwise) that the new release is out.

I'm always surprised more devs don't do this.

- I didn't want to sound critical or insulting about "not worth 99 cents" comment above, let me further qualify it.

I am not saying your app or your effort isn't worth 99 cents in a vacuum, I am saying given everything else I have to consider along side it, I may want to spend that 99 cents on a different app.

It is the same reason I won't buy $5.99 new releases on VUDU to stream them -- it's a hell of a lot cheaper than a theater, but along-side "free" on Netflix, it seems insanely expensive.

So when I compare Bullet Factory along side some of those top-10 or top-20 games that are 99 cents, I'm hesitant to spend to even get my foot in the door to check your app out, which doesn't help you at all.

A free version with an announcement feature (that maybe checks every 10 launches) would give you nice marketing for whatever game.next() is.

Hope that helps.

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#32

Post by biot »

As you're not looking for any sugar coating, after watching the video showing the gameplay you would need to pay me to want to play it. The reason is that there is no "why" to it. Shooting low-resolution textured balls wasn't fun in the late 80's, and I'm not seeing anything in the video that tells me it won't just be a chore to play.

Is there some back-story to this game that is interesting? Are these spheres of mutant gel being produced by the evil Dr. Klaus Scheitzenburger to turn children into mindless drones so that he can take over the planet and only I can stop it using my Mutant-b-Gone sphere blaster?

Oh, none of that? It's just a sphere popping game? There's no marketing that can save that.

Now a killer back-story isn't a requirement, but it would help if it were "juicy fun". There's some great advice here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2438/how_to_prototype_...

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#33

Post by mike_h »

greengarstudios wrote: post #30

I'm an independent iOS developer. My paid apps have sold over 100,000 copies at 99¢ or higher. In total, my iOS apps (including free apps) have been downloaded over 7 million times. I took a look at your app in the App Store. Here's your problem: your icon. The icon is the most prominent thing the user sees when first looking at your app in the App Store. Change your icon, and you'll get more downloads. Trust me :-)…

This was my first thought too -- when I saw the icon at the top of your page, I was bracing myself for an awful-looking game and saying to myself "well there's the problem right there". But then the game looks great, compelling even. Talk to this guy about your icon!

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#35

Post by kolinko »

Thanks for sharing.

A couple of details - icon (as someone else mentioned). Another thing is - you're a textbook example of promoting "features", and not "benefits". Instead of writing "Using Oscilloscope", which nobody cares about, you should've written "The smoothest shooting experience there is (thanks to oscilloscope)".

Also: get a graphic designer. Your graphics are not that bad, but a good painter could really make this app work much better. People buy good looking games.

As for your trailers - they aren't that bad. As a tech person I'll say: wow. It really looks smooth, I'm impressed. BUT most people aren't technical - aside from the screen they should see a happy person playing, and they should see someone really TILTING the device - now it's barely visible (perhaps even exaggerate the moves so they can be seen on the camera). Look at one of the Kinect trailers. You can't do as good, but you can get close. Oh - and remember that there should be a link close to the end of the movie, directing to the app store.

Anyway - these are just a couple of things for a good product / landing page. Doing this alone won't increase sales though...

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#36

Post by extension »

I'm trying to buy it but the app store isn't working right now. At any rate, here are some ideas from an iOS developer with nothing shipped yet, for what it's worth:

Be way more explicit with your branding and marketing about exactly what the game is, right down to the name, if you're willing to change it. Looking at the top charts right now, there are games that show you exactly how to play just with the title and the icon: Fruit Ninja, Cut the Rope, Flick Golf, Feed Me Oil. You want to be the gyro shooting gallery app. So, something like Gyro Shot or Gyro Shooting. It's sounds lame but it seems to work. It may also give Apple a reason to feature you, since you are demoing a hardware feature.

I think you also need a more fun look. The game looks really drab right now. A grey factory is not a terribly exciting backdrop and the balls are pointy. Choose a look that you can execute at grade A level. This is where the "glowing neon" look came from -- programmers who can't do art. Use shaders to make the balls perfectly round and give them some sort of cool effect. The screenshots should be attractive on their own.

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#37

Post by thestoicjester »

greengarstudios wrote: post #30

I'm an independent iOS developer. My paid apps have sold over 100,000 copies at 99¢ or higher. In total, my iOS apps (including free apps) have been downloaded over 7 million times. I took a look at your app in the App Store. Here's your problem: your icon. The icon is the most prominent thing the user sees when first looking at your app in the App Store. Change your icon, and you'll get more downloads. Trust me :-)…

Yeah, it's looking like a lot of people agree with you that the icon needs work. You've been contacted.

I'm definitely not in love with it, but it's better than the other ideas I had. The problem I was having was trying to depict the in-game action in such a small space. 3D stuff just seems to get cluttered or lost.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#39

Post by hxf148 »

Thank you for writing up your experiences. I hope that things improve. I've experienced much if not all of the things you have gone through with Infostripe http://infostripe.com. Was to be an iOS app but lives as a HTML5 one. iOS to return eventually.

I guess what I am saying is that you have to keep going, market, iterate, try things and as said not give up. At some point hopefully your product will begin to sell itself enough for you to improve or version 2 it.

Re: How (not) to sell your iOS app

#40

Post by vl »

greengarstudios wrote: post #30

I'm an independent iOS developer. My paid apps have sold over 100,000 copies at 99¢ or higher. In total, my iOS apps (including free apps) have been downloaded over 7 million times. I took a look at your app in the App Store. Here's your problem: your icon. The icon is the most prominent thing the user sees when first looking at your app in the App Store. Change your icon, and you'll get more downloads. Trust me :-)…

So could you post here a summary of what makes the icon good? I got professionally designed icon for one of my projects, but still got bunch of quite different opinions about it from various people.
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