Trying to get visibility on the App store is a constant struggle. In most cases it requires ongoing effort to publicise your game, finding a way to get it in front of the people who it will appeal to.
Astro Noughts is my latest iPad game. It’s an arcade number crunching game with, what I consider to be, a fairly unique concept. You can read a postmortem here (it was also featured on Gamasutra). I released Astro Noughts on 14th December 2010 – incredibly bad timing since there were a large number of high profile, kick-ass games released at exactly the same time (and EA decided to play hard ball). Despite the bad timing Astro Noughts sold 16 copies on its first day – you might consider this terribly low but I consider it a success. Sales bounced around for a while but by the end of January this year they had petered out to precisely 0 sales every day. That’s where it has remained, receiving 0 sales for the past 2 months.
Also in that time I have released a number of updates to improve the game and add value. I’ve also attempted to keep a thread alive on Touch Arcade. I had some coverage here and there but ultimately my attempts to court the media have failed miserably.
It was clear that I needed to do something, but what? I went FREE that’s what. Here’s how it went down…
Why Free
I’ve dabbled with Free before on my other games without much success. The general idea is that you make your game free for a period of time. During that time you are trying to get as much exposure as possible so that, when you make the game paid again, it takes off through word of mouth. Alternatively Apple may notice it rise up the charts and opt to feature it. Either way, you’ll increase your user base which increases future exposure from updates (e.g. you update the game and someone tells their friend who doesn’t yet own the game).
I made the decision to go free on Sunday 20th March. A quick tweet (and a follow up reminder) in addition to a post on my touch arcade thread – the stage was set.
Rankings
Making your game Free for a period is a bit like reliving launch day in that you get to obsessively check your chart ranking in the various categories and countries. It’s great fun and, to be perfectly honest, it alone is enough reason to go free.
There are a couple of tools used pretty much universally for checking rank. The first is MajicRank which tracks rank dynamically and the second is App Annie which aggregates daily rankings.
Astro Noughts started off pretty gently, breaking into a few of the the game sub category charts…
By the end of the first day it was the #1 educational game in a number of countries and had also broken into the top overall games in the US & UK as well as the top overall Apps in a number of countries…
Things came to a head on the second day when Astro Noughts hit #14 in the top free Apps in France. It was also in the top free games in US, UK, and Canada as well as the #1 educational game in 5 countries and within the top 10 educational game in 17 countries…
Due to its high ranking in France, Astro Noughts also ranked higher than Angry Birds HD Free in the top free Apps in France for a while. Pretty cool!
I’ve tried to collate this data as best I can to show the most interesting chart rises…
Top Free Apps
Top Free Games
Top Educational Games
Downloads
Rankings are all very nice but the big question is, how many downloads does this equate to? The iPad App store requires far fewer downloads than the iPhone store in order to begin seeing changes in rank. Presumably this is due to the reach of the iPad (when compared with the iPhone) and also perhaps the way that iPad users are interacting with their devices (perhaps spending more time in the prebuilt Apps such as Safari and Mail).
During its free period (20th – 23rd March) Astro Noughts was downloaded a total of 2,299 times. I’m pretty pleased with that number. Its great knowing that such a large number of people have played my game.
I think it’s always interesting to look at country distribution, if only to highlight how important the US charts are.
Press
I didn’t contact the press during the free period and most of the positive press happened virally on twitter. However, I did get some press through App Advice (check out the humorous comment) and Appmodo.
iTunes reviews and ratings
In the past when I’ve gone free this has had a negative impact on my iTunes ratings. With Astro Noughts this hasn’t been the case and my rating is still pretty good. I suspect some of this is due to Apple’s removal of the rating popup when you delete an App.
Aftershock & Conclusion
The Astro Noughts Free experiment lasted from 20th – 23rd March. I decided to put the App back to paid on 23rd March when I could see the rankings & downloads begin to decline. Putting Astro Noughts back to paid had an immediate affect on rankings since these are not shared between free and paid apps (i.e. I went back to my previous paid rankings). However, Astro Noughts did begin to rise up the paid charts in a few places…
Since putting the App back to paid, I’ve seen a total of 4 sales (across 2 days). If we say on average that during the free promotion I had 766 downloads per day and I’m now seeing 2 downloads per day (on average), that puts my conversion rate at about 0.26%.
Here’s the resulting revenue chart for the entire life of Astro Noughts…
and the related download chart…
From that you can extrapolate fun facts such as, for Astro Noughts, each download is currently worth 0.5p.
You may look at the above as a bit of a failure. I, however, see this as a partial success. Here’s why…
- An additional 2,299 people, from around the world, have played Astro Noughts
- For a brief period, Astro Noughts was higher than Angry Birds HD Free in the Top Free Apps in France.
- I have 4 additional paid sales that I may not have otherwise had
- I got to enjoy a few days of chart craziness
As an aside, Astro Noughts v1.3 has been submitted to Apple with Game Center support and a few minor fixes. If you feel compelled, you can buy Astro Noughts for $0.99 (59p) here.
Does this match your findings? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. As for me, I’m taking my £12 and moving to France.