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Taking a look at the sales, downloads, successes and failures of Hypership on XBLIG, WP7, and iOS.
Currently my game Hypership Out of Control is available for Xbox Live Indie Games, Windows Phone 7 (in both free ad-supported and paid versions), and iOS (normally $1 but we also ran a free 1 day promotion). I thought it would be interesting to see how essentially the same game preformed on several different platforms. In all instances, the paid versions of Hypership sell for $1. All sales data is current as of 10/30/2011. Green items are the highest, red items are the lowest.
XBLIG
Release date: 9/15/2010
Downloads: 7,242
Sales: 1,614
Days on sale: 411
Downloads per day: 17.62
Sales per day: 3.93
Conversion rate: 22%
Profits: $1,129.80
WP7 (paid)
Release date: 5/26/2011
Downloads: 253
Sales: 26
Days on sale: 158
Downloads per day: 1.6
Sales per day: .16
Conversion rate: 10%
Profits: $18.20
WP7 (free)
Release date: 4/27/2011
Downloads: 10,130
Sales: n/a
Days on sale: 187
Downloads per day: 54.17
Sales per day: n/a
Conversion rate: n/a
Profits: $39.54 (based on in-game ad revenue)
iOS (paid)
Release date: 9/15/2011
Downloads: 3,349
Sales: 3,349
Days on sale: 46
Downloads per day: 72.8
Sales per day: 72.8
Conversion rate: 100%
Profits: $2,344.30
iOS (free, one day only)
Release date: 10/26/2011
Downloads: 12,849
Sales: n/a
Days on sale: 1
Downloads per day: 12,849
Sales per day: n/a
Conversion rate: n/a
Profits: n/a
Overall
Release date: n/a
Downloads: 33,823
Sales: 4,989
Days on sale: 671
Downloads per day: 50.4
Sales per day: 7.43
Conversion rate: 15%
Profits: $3,492.30
Some assorted observations based on this data...
Overall values (besides profits) may be a bit wonky. I just added the amounts from all other results, which may be goofy because of the mixing of paid and free versions.
I only just realized how bad the WP7 version of Hypership has performed once putting this together. I spent a signification amount of time over slightly more than a month doing a port which in total has made me $57.74. While I know a lot of people got to enjoy the game, it's hardly worth it. The only aspect that makes the WP7 version worthwhile is that the levels created for the WP7 version were re-used for the iOS port, thus saving time developing that version (the XBLIG version of the levels are too wide to work on mobile platforms).
I don't think it's worth releasing paid versions of games on WP7 at all. The paid version of Hypership on WP7 is far and away my worst selling game EVER. I haven't even gotten paid for this since I haven't reached the minimum payout amount so my profits are really zero.
Single day free downloads on iOS are insane (12,849). One free day has outsold the total combined downloads of any other version of Hypership. It's no wonder the fremiume with in-app purchases route is so attractive. Hypership will get some kind of IAP in the future and I will try a completely free game with only IAP on iOS in the future.
The free Hypership promotion resulted in a lot of paid downloads the next day but after that spike, daily sales returned to just slightly above their previous rate.
The XBLIG version converts well, it just doesn't download high. Gamers can get free trials of the game and yet have done so only twice as much as iOS users pay for the game (without ever playing it too). And that's in over 8 times more days. As has long been my complaint, XBLIG's just don't get enough downloads (I'll blame being buried in the Dash and having poor filtering on that).
On each platform, there is a significant drop-off in sales / downloads after the first couple weeks. This is most apparent on the paid WP7 version followed second by XBLIG. Sales on both those platforms are so low these days they might as well not exist. Sales on iOS will at least net me a few hundred sales each month.
The free WP7 version of Hypership has the best long tail in terms of downloads, adding 20-30 each day. Despite this, games played daily (I can track via the online scoring system) have only increased a tiny amount. Monthly ad revenue remains at or under $10.
Free on WP7 can't touch free on iOS. One day of free on iOS netted 12,849 downloads vs 10,130 downloads over 187 days on WP7. Microsoft still has a long way to go to catch up to Apple in the smart phone martketplace.
For more information on any of my games please visit FunInfused.com or follow me on twitter at Twitter.com/FunInfused.
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