Realistic figures for sales revenue??

[Woody_FX]

Hypothetically speaking:

You develop a original and innovative game.(not branded)
You love the game, everybody loves the game.

You start to sell the game through all your available channels.


What kind of sales figures might you expect from this game ?

Per month would you sell 3000 copies?

Month 1 you sell 3000units at 1:50e ::: 4500e
Month 2 you sell 5000units at 1:50e ::: 7500e
Month 3 you sell 4500units at 1:50e ::: 6750e
Month 4 you sell 2000units at 1:50e ::: 3000e
Month 5 you sell 750 units at 1:50e ::: 1125e
Month 6 you sell 500 units at 1:50e ::: 750e

Total expected revenue would be :::23725e in revenue per game

Tell me do you think that is about right or is it a conservative estimate (of units sold or the amount per sale you will receive back after people have taken there share)


Would a good non branded mobile game sell 15000 units in its life time??

Brian

[kisember]

Ohhhh.
That would be fantastic. But you have to wake up.
My games available at Handago and Nokia Software Market.
On handago I had 1 (one) sale for a month. On NSM the avarage is 1 game/day (NSM: where is my money!).
As a developer I think you can't sell that many games, maybe if you are a talented manager.

[Woody_FX]

LOL!!

Ok so in your experience it has been nothing like these sales figures??

Anybody else got a comment on sales volume ?

Brian

[shmoove]

The best bet to getting high sales in my opinion is striking deals with the network operators so that you're game has good placement in their portal. Remember that that's the only place the bulk of the users will be looking for games anyway. Without a good deal (directly or through publishers and content aggregators) with the network operators, you'll find it quite hard to make a living from this business.
That's my two cents.

shmoove

[artemg]

Yeah, it seems that nowadays it's not even so much about how good is what you are selling, but how well you can sell it. So it would all depend on your marketing channels.

Question to shmoove:
I've been thinking that operators were the best to approach to move a mobile product. How do you approach them being a private developer? I've heard several times - "we get all our software from such and such company". Dunno whether this is just the thing in the local market (extreme partner loyalty ) or I'm missing out on something in the marketing concept.

[shmoove]

I don't really have a golden answer for that. I work in a company that already has connections with most of the service providers in our country, and it had them since before I started working there. When I arrived my company was just developing WAP games, and already had deals with two of the three operators, so it was a natural progression to come to them with Java games as soon as we started developing them. I imagine it wasn't easy for them. I'm lucky in that sense that I don't have to bother with the sales aspect of the business, we already have a couple of people that that's they're job. All I have to do is develop the games.
One thing I can guess though, is that I'm from Israel, which is a small market, so I imagine that made it easier to get into it (there weren't too many players in the business when the company started out). And after having your foot in the door, it becomes much easier to move forward ("We have games that have been successfully deployed in two different operators... blah blah blah").
I guess nowadays it's a (difficult) matter of just peddling your wares as aggresively as possible and in every chance you get: approaching the operators directly, at wireless industry conventions, at gaming industry conventions, etc.
It seems like it's more an issue of "who you know" and "who knows you" than of "what you have".
So maybe approaching a distributor or content aggregator (one that has all the good connections) might be a better idea for a small developer just starting out. Just don't "sell your soul" to him or you might regret it (and he might not give you a choice ).
The industry will invariably gravitate into a "big fish" game, or bust away in a "dot com"-like manner, but the time for the "small fish" to get into the pond is running short, that's for sure.

shmoove

[artemg]

shmoove,

Thanks a lot for the through reply. I wasn't counting on a "golden answer", I expected exactly what I got - some light on how things are in the mobile software market. It confirmed my notion that it's all about WHO you know. I guess at the end of the day THAT defines "realistic figures for sales revenue" , although at this point, I'm more concerned with getting a foot in the door than making real money. Thanks again for the tips.

[Woody_FX]

Elkwares game ANNO 1553 (the date may be different) was the top selling game last year with over a 100,000 units sold.

They would be the exception. What i would like to know what a normal (good original non branded game) would sell?

In a year?

It seems 20,000 would make a game very successful so i guess people when they hit 10,000 would be very happy.