- This topic has 22 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 9 months ago by
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Hi all,
Some good news to share from PlayFirst International. Our latest iPhone game Cooking Dash is currently the #6 paid app on the U.S. App Store and selling like hot cakes. :D
We put a lot of work in to adapt this game for the iPhone platform rather than doing a straight port and the effort seems to be paying off. It’s on 99c sale until tomorrow if you want to pick it up.
Cheers!
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Congratulations Chrack Gregason and the team (Damo and previous contributors)!
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Yes saw it featured on irish app store too. Great job. Keep those apps Flo_ing. Lame pun I know. :)
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Thanks all! After the weekend, Cooking Dash is now the #2 Paid Game on the U.S. App Store:
http://app-store.appspot.com/?url=viewTop%3Fid%3D25180%26popId%3D30 -
Chris
That’s a great success story. Have you guys put together a post-mortem or project summary? I know its something I’d definitely be interested in reading, and probably all the people who bought your game would too.
And I’m sure Gamasutra (or equivalent) would run the story based on the numbers your talking about. #2 is after all, a serious accomplishment.
Well done to all involved.
-Brendan.
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Thanks for the suggestion jediboy, I’ll mention it to our producer and see if we can do something there. The ‘What Went Wrong’ section might take a few pages though :lol:
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Well done lads- that’s one hell of an achievement. A thought just struck me- is there a publicly available version of the Playground SDK for iPhone, or is it just for the desktop platforms? Might save me some work down the line if there was :)
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Cheers Colin. The PlayGround SDK currently supports PC & Mac.
I can’t comment on what we may or may not be developing internally that hasn’t been officially announced. Several developers on our forums at http://developer.playfirst.com have asked the same question though so feel free to add a request there.
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Was the iPhone game developed in Ireland? If so, that’s definitely pretty cool.
We’ll be putting some time aside in around 3 weeks to do a "iPhone game in 30 days" development blast ( using Unity 3D ). We’re considering extending it to say 6 months, with a game every month or there-abouts, with community input as an experiment, but it’s difficult to know what online infrastructure to use for that.
Mal
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Hi Mal, yeah the iPhone version was developed here in Dublin over the last few months. The PC/Mac version came out August last year.
The 30-day game thing sounds like a lot of fun. I know I’ve a heap of ideas I’d love to just try out like that. And if even only one of them works out well you can build on that.
Will these all be paid or free apps? We’ve found that it’s really helps sales to have our games cross promote each other – it’s a good way of getting exposure. And the more games you have cross promoting each other, the better it works.
Chris
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I’m not sure that you can easily discern the beneficial impact of some random cross-promoted games from the benificial impact of "Oh look, more Dash games!"; which is to say, I’m not sure that advice goes for everyone :)
(That might sound mean-spirited, but it isn’t intended as such; it seems that the experiment has no control. For instance: are you cross-promoting a game that hasn’t benefitted at a minimum from previous exposure on desktop platforms? Like something really brand new)
That said, a couple of other things (not that I want to hijack the thread, maybe just indulge me for this one reply):
– At least some indies have grouped together to do cross-promotion (see http://apptreasures.com for an example). I don’t know if that validates the point since I don’t know how well they’re doing; I can’t imagine that it hurts though. What’s important to note is that I imagine each developer there is free to pursue their own marketing agenda and if they’re successful then everybody benefits. But I don’t think cross-promotional efforts across a portfolio of games from a single developer would be as beneficial; why not just make one good game and swing your whole weight behind that?
– On a related topic- maybe one of the big guys would be amiable to cross promotion with an indie? I’m not looking at Playfirst *specifically*, but given present company… :) . Most likely that would be a warren of financial skullduggery, but one can think aloud, right?
– On a somewhat related topic; the arbitrary barriers presented to small developers by the App Store approval process continue to get more onerous- have a read of this and imagine yourself in the same situation: http://gamesfromwithin.com/at-the-mercy-of-apples-whim . I have to wonder if being Playfirst, an already established desktop developer, gets you – even implicitly – around that kind of bullshit, which continues to make me very wary of dedicating any significant development time to an iPhone application.
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Here’s an interesting article on the subject:
http://blog.flurry.com/bid/18667/Cross-sell-or-Die-Get-More-Sales-in-the-iPhone-App-StoreAs the article mentions, it works best when the apps share a similar target audience. A lot of iPhone developers do it and it’s an approach that worked for us – YMMV :)
We have to wait for approval the same as everybody else. I think the biggest issue with the approval process is the turnaround time – they need to hire more testers or maybe outsource it and get that down to a couple of days. The arbitrary (and just plain wrong) decisions wouldn’t matter so much if it was fast to submit an update.
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> The 30-day game thing sounds like a lot of fun. I know I’ve a heap of ideas
> I’d love to just try out like that. And if even only one of them works out well
> you can build on that.It would definitely be a challenge! ( and we would have to ensure that we didn’t go the way of http://www.30daygame.com/ ).
We have a list of about 40 games at the moment which are all potentially viable for the area of the iPhone market that we would be targetting.
> Will these all be paid or free apps? We’ve found that it’s really helps sales to > have our games cross promote each other – it’s a good way of getting
> exposure. And the more games you have cross promoting each other, the
> better it works.Yep, they would be paid, but at the lowest 99cent cost.
They would also be 3D games – with enough gameplay for say 15 to 30 minutes ( or short action 5 minute blasts ) – enough to get played 3 or 4 times, which seems to justify that price point.I agree with the cross-promoting – this is something that would def be in there ( even as a "Other iPhone Apps" button with links ).
I agree with Colin that well established brands have a bit of an easier time here, but of course they also have to produce higher quality / polished games, which inevitably mean more resources / cost.
Also, agree with the update issue – if Apple could lower the time of submitting an update ( maybe with a caveat of having a penalty of removing your app from the store for X amount of time, if you ended up doing something illegal with the update ), the initial submission time could be a bit easier to handle.
Mal
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Mal
40 (!) games just sitting waiting to unleashed on the iPhone?
If you don’t mind me asking, how big is your team up there in Belfast, Mal?
-Brendan.
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40 suitable ideas for iiPhone games, not already developed games :)
We currently have 5 full-time 3D people ( artists / coders ) up here.
Mal -
Looks like you guys have wooed yourselves a new EA-veteran of a GM. Will they make the next shindig??
http://search.sys-con.com/node/1276880
B.
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Hey jediboy. Yup, it’s a really good hire to help our push into social games. I’ll tell her she’s invited!
btw, check out the major update we just released for Diner Dash on the iPhone. We did a total overhaul of the artwork (courtesy of Kavaleer Productions here in Dublin) and made lots of improvements to the UI. It’s also our first title with In App Purchase enabled – you can now buy an extra restaurant with 10 levels for 99c. </shameless_plug>
Here’s a vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GZfVxigsSg&feature=player_embeddedchris
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The Diner Dash update looks great, Chris. Nice one! :D
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8) yehaa! fantastic stuff lads .. even got the new restaurant in for valentine weekend !
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Deadly stuff krist, well done
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new graphics looks great – and it looks like its running faster too. Will make sure to give it a spin this weekend.
congrats again guys.
-Brendan.
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Cheers all! I think we’re putting it on sale this weekend so you can grab it for a couple euro cheaper if you wait a day or two.
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