Ouya game sales: food for thought
Monkey Archive Forums/Digital Discussion/Ouya game sales: food for thought
| ||
| http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/ouya-developers-report-poor-to-middling-sales-figures-for-early-games/ the promoted comment was the most interesting: There was a talk from David Edery of Spry Fox, iirc, about how games with demos typically have _less_ sales than those without, looking over a wide selection of titles, though having a trailer increased sales vs not having one. Theories as to why range from the cynical "people can see the game sucks before paying" up to "lots of adults-with-families don't want to invest in the full experience and are sated by a couple hours of free demo." Short version: the Ouya's tactic of mandating free trials of offline games will statistically result in less profit for developers on the system. |
| ||
| The Ouya is pretty much following the path I expected: a fun little niche product that mostly enables Indie devs and hobbyists to sell to each other and a handful of enthusiasts. The demo question just requires more stats and specific examples. Giving away a "couple hours" of gameplay is probably an error unless your game both hooks the player and promises more in that time. If you're selling a $1-$2.99 title with no IAP then that demo very likely is consuming the "I'd like to give that a try" impulse. |
| ||
| Hmm that's pretty interesting. I'd say you need a free demo otherwise your app is just ignored - at least in the big stores. |
| ||
| Indie Games Blog has a piece on indie devs experiences with the OUYA so far. It has some more downloads to sales stats in there. http://indiegames.com/2013/07/the_ouya_experience_what_game_.html |
| ||
| I wouldn't trust any statistics that currently exist. I have an Ouya, and there are only a handful of games that I categorize as both "good" and "new". Most of the games are either: exclusive crap, crap ported from phones, or games that are good but just ports of games that have been on many platforms for years (Wizorb, FF 3, Super Crate Box, etc.) Additionally, the storefront is poorly designed, in that you can't see any prices until you download, install, and play the game. The organization is poor and not very attractive, and the apps that could draw larger audiences, like Amazon VOD, Netflix, Youtube, aren't on the system yet. Even though it has a browser, dedicated apps are the way to go for these types of services because the device has no native keyboard or mouse. Until there are a significant number of games designed specifically for Ouya, AND they fix the issues with the storefront and add the applications that can attract consumers, it's hard to say that this data means very much, if anything at all. |
| ||
| I had high hopes for the ouya but it is sounding more and more like its dead in the water. Sales figures for even Towerfall, the top seller, are extremely dismal. Guess I was wrong. |
   |