[PIGMI] Square Off Released to Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

[Aranda Morrison]

Regretfully, I have to correct that last email from Josh. Those numbers were 
based on a short skype message I wrote in which I accidentally said "sales" 
instead of "downloads"! The actual numbers for the first 11 days after release 
are:

Downloads: 4992
Sales: 150
Conversion rate: 3.0%

This is pretty depressing. It also doesn't bode well for the WP7 platform that a 
game can sit at #32 in the "Top" games list, be rated 4.5 stars and still sell 
less than 10 copies a day. We're still holding out a small amount of hope that 
the numbers from Microsoft are bogus, or based on partial data!. I'm not certain 
whether the "Top" list is based on downloads or sales, but I suspect downloads 
as our position on the list is too static to reflect the much smaller and more 
fluctuating sales numbers.

Here's a couple of brighter points:
	1. Our Mogade stats indicate that up to yesterday we're still seeing over 130 
new users every day with over 700 game starts per day. This indicates an 
advertisement supported version is definitely worth considering.
	2. Square Off on Xbox Live Indie Games is still selling almost 1000 copies a 
month at $1 with a conversion rate of about 45%. It also looks like the WP7 
version has improved this as the month of May looks to be heading for well over 
1000 copies at 60% conversion.
	3. We're finally going to bite the bullet and target iOS for our next game. I 
really had high hopes for WP7, but this project has reminded me that Microsoft 
has a LOT of catching up to do.
Cheers,
Aranda
Gnomic Studios


________________________________
From: Josh Stewart <aek at wn.com.au>
To: pigmi at pigmi.org
Sent: Sat, 21 May, 2011 8:52:52 PM
Subject: Re: [PIGMI] Square Off Released to Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

Some other facts (if you like numbers)...
We have been tracking time on the project using Kimai, to help determine what 
everyone in the team will get from the profits.
Kimai reports that we have spent 544 man hours to port our existing xbox live 
game to Windows Phone 7 and ship it.

Aranda reports that initial sales for the last 18 odd days is around 5000 units. 
It sells for $3 in the US and $4 in Australia (MS decide what the regional 
prices are based on a selected US price). Microsoft takes a 30% cut of sales I 
believe.

He also said the conversion rate of trial users to was currently 3% which is 
pretty bad. We will do a post mortem of the project soon and hopefully release 
more detailed sales information.

cheers,
Josh

On 21/05/2011 10:38 AM, Josh Stewart wrote:
> Good morning,
> I thought you might be interested to know that Gnomic Studios 
><http://www.gnomicstudios.com/> released Square Off on the Windows Phone 7 
>Marketplace in the first week of May.
> The response from reviewers and also marketplace reviews has been phenomenal.
> 
>     * We released the game in 4 languages (with the help of some crowd
>       sourced translations)
>     * We are the 3rd most popular non-xbox live enabled game (the xbox
>       live enabled titles get a lot more exposure on the marketplace).
>     * We are ranked as 32nd on the top games list on the platform and
>       have stayed there.
> 
> *Here is a summary of our marketplace reviews by users*..
>http://wp7reviews.tomverhoeff.com/AppReviews.aspx?id=3a3e5ed5-6570-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8&mp=en-US
>S 
><http://wp7reviews.tomverhoeff.com/AppReviews.aspx?id=3a3e5ed5-6570-e011-81d2-78e7d1fa76f8&mp=en-US>
>
> 
> My favourite is: "Outstanding!!! I was considering taking my life this morning 
>but this game made me change my mind."
> *
> Here are some website reviews*:
> http://www.wpcentral.com/square-review
>http://www.bestwp7games.com/square-off-a-fun-dual-stick-shooter-for-windows-phone-7.html
>l
>http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2011/05/04/square-off-for-windows-phone-7-hands-on-review/
>/
> http://www.wp7connect.com/2011/05/05/game-review-square-off/
> http://dotconn.de/main/news/square-off-review/
> 
> Sales data is trickling in, but the conversion rate is exceptionally low, but 
>apparently some of this data takes over 2 months before it is full reconciled 
>from different mobile carriers, so we are holding out hope. We will post some 
>sales data in a month or two once we have more confidence in the results.
> 
> Happy to answer any questions about its development or marketing. Gnomic 
>Studios is now starting work on a new unnamed title for mobile devices, likely 
>to primarily target iPhone.
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