Sales/Downloads

MightyRabbit

Out of curiosity, is it against any terms or rules to discuss sales or download numbers on these forums? I'm asking because I'm really curious to know if anyone is seeing (relative) success on OUYA yet.

Our download numbers are much lower than I would have expected at this point and I wanted to know if other devs were in a similar boat.

Dreamwriter

Right now only other developers have OUYA's for the most part, so I wouldn't expect a lot.  Over the next month or so though there should be something like 60,000 OUYA's arriving in actual customer hands, so in theory the numbers of downloads (and maybe even purchases) should be rising throughout the month.

MightyRabbit

I just would have thought by nearly two weeks in we would be seeing a constant rise in downloads, instead we're seeing an inverse. Downloads peaked last week at ~20 and are now at 4 per day. This doesn't seem cohesive with a steady rollout of consoles. If I had to guess based on our numbers, less than 1% of backer consoles have gone out. Are other devs seeing numbers that our similar to ours? Personally I'm really happy with everything the OUYA has done for us so far (got tons of press last week), but I wanted to make sure that we weren't already flopping saleswise.

jayderyu

You know speaking the inverse effect of the current trend about shipping and downloads. This could effect the entire "March 28" top games for 6 weeks will be featured in an interview. Seriously I thought that was a bad idea and now unfortunatly as you point out in regards to teh reverse effect. That this sorta makes the entire March28 deadline for anything pointless and ineffective.

I really wouldn't take into value downloads until the month of June.

stolk

MightyRabbit said:

I just would have thought by nearly two weeks in we would be seeing a constant rise in downloads, instead we're seeing an inverse. Downloads peaked last week at ~20 and are now at 4 per day. This doesn't seem cohesive with a steady rollout of consoles. If I had to guess based on our numbers, less than 1% of backer consoles have gone out. Are other devs seeing numbers that our similar to ours?

Same here:

Peaked at 23 downloads on apr 4, now down to 5 downloads on apr 8.

Game: The Little Crane That Could (in sim category, not in sandbox)

So yeah, shipped console count must be really low.

Purchases are one big mystery: was initially a few per day, then got replaced by corrupt Purchases.cvs and now got replaced by a text file that claims no Purchases at all, ever.

  Bram

jayderyu

I originally wanted my game out by March28, I'm glad it's not ready. This let's Boxer8 iron out some more problems.

I was following the shipping thread. Now that we are in the middle of the third week. I am certainly starting to become far more curios as to what effect the Chinese holiday has had.

I would have expected far more sales and downloads than those the OP, stolk mentioned.

PeasantDave

I'm also following along in the shipping thread. As far as I can tell, no consumers have received a unit yet.

MountainSheep

Download stats for Ice Rage since it was released:

March 28: 7 downloads

March 29: 30 downloads

March 30: 7 downloads

March 31: 3 downloads

April 1: 13 downloads

April 2: 7 downloads

April 3: 13 downloads

April 4: 38 downloads

April 5: 75 downloads

April 6: 84 downloads

April 7: 80 downloads

April 8: 82 downloads

April 9: 46 downloads

April 10: 58 downloads

April 11: 57 downloads

MightyRabbit

Just looking at Mountain Sheep's numbers, they're way ahead of us. We're sitting at 163 downloads total and we're featured. I have absolutely no idea how you're getting those kinds of numbers! I guess Saturday Morning RPG isn't appealing at first glance?

Ayrik

RPG is pretty niche, where casual sports games have a much larger market. I know I haven't downloaded Saturday Morning RPG, but I have downloaded Ice Rage, though I don't really play it anyway so downloads don't mean everything.

jayderyu

Thanks MountainSheep. Appreciate you sharing the numbers. Those numbers show a more steady rate. 

stolk

The Little Crane That Could:

(newest first, oldest last)

2013-04-11 1

2013-04-10 2

2013-04-09 3

2013-04-08 5

2013-04-07 19

2013-04-06 19

2013-04-05 6

2013-04-04 23

2013-04-03 7

2013-04-02 4

2013-04-01 2

2013-03-31 2

2013-03-30 5

2013-03-29 17

2013-03-28 5

I am puzzled by the falling trend, I expected rising.

I do get plenty of likes though, so I am starting to doubt the analytics.

Dreamwriter

Well, it's mostly been the same crowd (developers) all this time, since so very few of the Kickstarter units have shipped, so that's probably the regular falling interest of a product where its customers aren't seeing any marketing other than seeing it on the store shelves - most of the developers who would be interested in trying the game without hearing more about it have downloaded it already.  

We all had this rush to be there at launch, but here two weeks later less than 5% of the Kickstarter people have had theirs shipped, so there really wasn't much of a need to rush for launch :)  

sonofbryce

Here are the download stats for my game:

http://www.donutget.com/ouya-stats/

Hicsy

epic thanks for sharing!

SpoonThumb

There are too many factors at play here. Weekends for one, then getting featured or getting shifted from sandbox to genres, then the fact that once people have gone through the genre categories a few times, they work out that there is a lot less new stuff in there, so browse for new stuff in sandbox instead. Then factor in that some news about the OUYA might have come out on a particular day, causing more people to boot theirs up and have a play. Or even that a new game got released, people go onto the store and remember about that other game they meant to download before but didn't.

What would be really useful from OUYA is some data about total downloads and total activity across all games on particular days, so individual developers can start to cancel out days when there were just plain more ppl on the OUYA that day

AkbarBitcoins

So nobody is willing to give out any information about actual sales?  I'd imagine that most downloads don't turn into sales...

Dreamwriter

It's really too early for sales, because almost nobody except developers have consoles.  And speaking as a developer, I haven't had time to really try out many games at all to see if I'd like to buy them, nor time to play games to the point where I'd need to buy them.  So I've only bought two games, and I only really played one of them much because I could play that one in the 12 minutes it takes me to build my game for testing on hardware.

JonAbrams

stolk said:

Purchases are one big mystery: was initially a few per day, then got replaced by corrupt Purchases.cvs and now got replaced by a text file that claims no Purchases at all, ever.

  Bram

The Purchases CSV initially included all recorded purchases, including failed purchases, and test purchases. We then changed it to only include real purchases that involved actual money being spent. The reason you got errors was because when there was nothing to report, we returned an empty CSV file, which apparently most CSV importers don't like. Now we include that message so you at least know what's up.

If you have reason to believe that you've had real purchases made in your game, but they're not showing up in the CSV, please get in touch with me and I'll take a look.

Aiursrage2k

AkbarBitcoins said:

So nobody is willing to give out any information about actual sales?  I'd imagine that most downloads don't turn into sales...

I would like to know what the numbers as well, on IOS its usually 1..3% of people buying the game. On google play its probably worse where some people were getting .5% of people buying.

AkbarBitcoins

Dreamwriter said:

It's really too early for sales, because almost nobody except developers have consoles.  And speaking as a developer, I haven't had time to really try out many games at all to see if I'd like to buy them, nor time to play games to the point where I'd need to buy them.  So I've only bought two games, and I only really played one of them much because I could play that one in the 12 minutes it takes me to build my game for testing on hardware.

That doesn't mean that you could give the sales per download.  Many of these people have hundreds of downloads, enough to tell if you're at 1% or 5% pretty accurately.  The general consumer might be different than the developer, but I wouldn't expect them to be that much different.

stolk

AkbarBitcoins said:

That doesn't mean that you could give the sales per download.  Many of these people have hundreds of downloads, enough to tell if you're at 1% or 5% pretty accurately.  The general consumer might be different than the developer, but I wouldn't expect them to be that much different.

Bear in mind: dev kits purchase IAPs for free.

Not in hundreds yet, but here you go:

"The Little Crane That Could"

Downloads: 129, sales: 0 which for now gives it 0%

Same game raked in 7M+ downloads on other markets, with conversion rates of:

Google Play: 5%

iOS App Store: 6%

Amazon: 7%

If conversion rates would have been similar to other platforms, I would have expected 8 purchases by now, not zero.

I think the downloads I have received so far could have been strictly from dev kits maybe?

Dreamwriter

Dev kits only purchase your own game's IAPs for free, not other games (and it's the server doing that, not the dev kit).

SpoonThumb

Well, I know I've not been able to purchase anything until yesterday because my credit card info was incorrect. Somewhat depends on me now going and correcting it, but I suffer from being a cheap bastard, so might not be right away

VoodooDoubloon

Here are the stats for Around the Rock Disc Golf, what we are waiting for is the ability have external URL to drive gamers to OUYA game page. For us, its all about spreading awareness and the more links from the outside coming in, the better. Since there is no way to market your game on OUYA right now, the store just seems like one big melting pot swirling in unknown directions. :)

2013-04-19,31

2013-04-18,48

2013-04-17,9

2013-04-16,5

2013-04-15,4

2013-04-15,4

2013-04-14,37

2013-04-13,56

2013-04-12,18

2013-04-12,14

2013-04-11,26

2013-04-10,51

2013-04-09,17

2013-04-08,25

2013-04-07,12

2013-04-06,18

2013-04-05,28

2013-04-04,20

2013-04-03,8

2013-04-02,4

2013-03-31,4

2013-03-30,4

2013-03-29,2

2013-03-29,12

2013-03-28,1

MightyRabbit

I'll go ahead and divulge our sales/downloads - we're at 217 downloads with 4 converted purchases at $5.99. So we're seeing that roughly 2% of downloads will buy the game. If we can manage to get 100,000 downloads during our lifetime on OUYA and have that conversion rate hold, our time spent developing the OUYA version will definitely be worthwhile. I'd like to see the conversion rate rise, but with around 1 hour and 30 minutes of free gameplay in our game - there isn't a huge reason to buy it right out of the gate. We might need to rethink how we're doing the free side of things, though.

AkbarBitcoins

MightyRabbit - in all honesty, I think you bet on the wrong horse.  I see no reason to expect 100k downloads at any point.  Doing more work on the product sounds like a really, really bad idea for you guys that will only lose you more money.  Stick to work on Breach and Clear! :)

XxTIMOxX

AkbarBitcoins is the voice of negativity on this site, troll on my friend 

Piers

@MightyRabbit SMRPG is great, my gf is currently addicted to it.  In all honestly 1.5 hours before paywall might be a bit too much.  My guess, with no data to back it up, is about 45 min. before paywall feels right

AkbarBitcoins

Oh no I was negative???

I'm quite serious.  I'm familiar with Mighty Rabbit's work (I live nearby), they've got an exciting title in the works that would be a much better use of their time than trying to focus on a platform with such a small install base.

Aiursrage2k

I wonder if ouya is doing a good job promoting the apps, shouldnt there be a few apps everyone is downloading. Maybe have apps of the week or whatever.