Sales for Casual Games?

Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Sales for Casual Games?

zoqfotpik(Posted 2011) [#1]
I'm wondering what typical sales figures are for middle-of-the-road, good-quality casual games that don't necessarily break any new ground but are pretty, polished and well-made, possibly with unique themes.

I realize that this is a huge and nebulous question without any typical answer. But I know that a number of people here have games out on various huge portals.

What sorts of numbers do people run into with this sort of thing?

My primary reason for moving to Monkey from Blitz was the amazing cross-platform capability-- the HTML5 target will also allow me to have demos online.

What numbers do people see for heavily cross-platform games?


AdamRedwoods(Posted 2012) [#2]
Under the "monkey projects" forum, look for pirate solitaire and blotty pots, they both share their sales experiences.


zoqfotpik(Posted 2012) [#3]
TY.


anawiki(Posted 2012) [#4]
Well, casual games sales vary by genre and game quality. I have experience in PC/Mac games, not much in mobile world. For sure you won't get much attention without current Monkey version on PC/Mac because of issues with full screen/windowed support and lack of DX. That's why we use BMX for PC/Mac and write the code the way it is easy to port to Monkey.

As for sales: 5 years ago my worst selling game made probably 500$. We released 10 games since then and their sales vary, but Avalon Legends Solitaire is our top seller. Still it earned in it's lifetime just 5-10% of what real top sellers earn (top hidden object games). For us that revenue is very nice, for US based company, it wouldn't be enough to survive.


Xaron(Posted 2012) [#5]
I will create a more general thread here in this section as I will share the stats of my next game as well, which is coming soon.


zoqfotpik(Posted 2012) [#6]
I'll be interested to see how it does.

I think the numbers for blottypots may not be all THAT bad, all things considered. I don't know how long it took you but 45 bucks in a month is 45 bucks, and presumably you are getting zero traffic on your website because it's new (so it's all through the app stores), and if you did no marketing that's a huge factor too. Also let's say that it brings in that month for two years (possible, I think)-- let's call it $50-- that's $1200, which is an OK number if you spent a week on it. If you spent much more than a week on it, that stops looking OK.


anawiki(Posted 2012) [#7]
You can take a look at sales figures I posted in my blog and those posted by Grey Alien in his blog.

http://greyaliengames.com/blog/
http://www.anawiki.com/sellmoregames/


zoqfotpik(Posted 2012) [#8]
Thank you, interesting particularly his comments about the long tail and your comments about working with final art.