Introduction
Media coverage about iPhone development seems to be a bit bipolar. There is no shortage of stories covering the few big iPhone success stories - #1 apps that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars for their developers. Lately there have also been a number of refreshing articles reminding everyone that the vast majority of iPhone developers don’t make enough to cover their costs. So who’s in the middle?
From the beginning, my goal (shared by NimbleBit as a whole) has been to earn enough to keep making fantastic games - not to get rich quick. It became apparent from the start that betting all your chips on a single game or app was a risky (increasingly so) strategy. Luckily casual games are a perfect fit for the iPhone, and I’ve been able to develop a polished casual game every month or so (sometimes with Dave’s help). While we have been fortunate with the success of Scoops (which never made it into the Top 25 Paid Apps) we still think building an entire family of quality games has many advantages. By using cross promotion you can build a brand name and build up a larger fan base. Success of individual games can also be shared by all to a certain extent. You can bring in fans of a particular title who have the potential to grow into cheerleaders for all of the rest of your games. This is certainly NOT an argument for pumping out shovelware. We try to make sure that every one of our games (6 so far) stand on their own and don’t consider them just more lottery tickets.
We’ve decided to release NimbleBit’s sales numbers as proof that it isn’t only rags or riches for small independent developers on the App Store. Hopefully it will give some hope to talented iPhone indies still struggling or waiting to take the plunge into iPhone development. It is my opinion that dedicated developers can survive on the App Store with minimal luck given the right approach and enough hard work.
The Numbers
We’ll start with a raw breakdown of each game. The “sales” numbers are total downloads of a game both free (during promotions) and paid. Most large figures are rounded to digestible whole amounts. The development time listed is a rough estimate and does not include time spent marketing, providing customer service, or developing updates. All revenue figures are after Apple’s cut, but before Uncle Sam’s. All figures are as of June 1st 2009.
Hanoi Plus
Developers: 1
Development time: 3 weeks
Age: 10 months
Sales: 26,000
Rev. (to date): $13,500
Rev. (last month): $380
Scoops
Developers: 1
Development time: 1 month
Age: 8 months
Sales: 170,000
Rev. (to date): $140,000
Rev. (last month): $19,000
Textropolis
Developers: 1
Development time: 1 month
Age: 4.5 months
Sales: 14,000
Rev. (to date): $18,500
Rev. (last month): $1,400
Kyper
Developers: 2
Development time: 1 month
Age: 2 months
Sales: 14,000
Rev. (to date): $880
Rev. (last month): N/A (now free)
Sky Burger
Developers: 2
Development time: 2 months
Age: 1.5 months
Sales: 56,500
Rev. (to date): $17,000
Rev. (last month): $11,400
Graphs
The resolution for some of these graphs gets pretty low in the earlier months, this is because I don’t have saved daily reports going back that far. Sharp dips are usually the result of setting a game to free for a short period.
App Revenue
We started tracking game launches with a news ticker in Sky Burger, in the last month it has been integrated into each of our games. Unfortunately we don’t currently differentiate which game the news ticker is being loaded from. We use the unobtrusive news ticker (usually on the main menu) to provide links to promotions we’re running, new games that have just launched, or just a friendly little message. You can see a large spike during our last Freebie Friday promotion.
NimbleBit game plays per day
Into each game we’ve also integrated a “NimbleStore” which allows players to browse all our games in a custom styled “App Store” launched in game (no kicking the player out to Safari). We track visitors to the NimbleStore using Google Analytics. You can see the same spike for the last Freebie Friday. Unfortunately we don’t currently track how many visitors follow links from the NimbleStore to the real App Store.
NimbleStore visitors per day
NimbleStore front page
NimbleStore game detail page
Conclusion
While we’ve had our moderate successes and failures alike, we still don’t have all the answers when it comes the the ever-evolving App Store. I’m certainly glad we kept going after our first game didn’t top the charts. Looking forward, the best advice we can give is to be passionate about what you’re creating, get involved in the iPhone community, and keep trying new things until you find something that works.
