[casual_games] Sales, Exposure and Profitability

[James C. Smith]

One minor correction is that most games sell for much less than $20.   $20
is the "list price" for most games, but most customers end up getting a
discount by using a subscription, by purchasing games in bundles, or waiting
for game to go on sale. Most portals pay royalties based on these discounted
prices rather than taking the discount out of their portion.  When a
developer gets a royalty check form some major portals they will find their
game sold for an average sale price of much closer to $10.  But there are
still a few portals who sell all games at full list price all the time or
take any discounts out of the portals portion and pay the developer 30% of
the full price.  

 

On average you should plan for something a lot closer to 30% of $10 rather
than $20.

 

 

James C. Smith

www.Game-Sales-Charts.com

 

 

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Gorm Lai
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 12:53 PM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: [casual_games] Sales, Exposure and Profitability

 

Hi,

 

I have been doing some serious calculations that I would like to run through
you guys.

 

First, having worked in casual games before (for set top boxes), I did an
estimate that a good polished casual game can be completed in 4 to 5 man
month, including programmer and artist hours.

At a low starting income of around $4000 dollars a month, expenses totals to
approx $20.000.

 

Selling a game at $20, with 30% going to the developer this means an income
of 6$ pr. sold unit. Thus, selling _just_ 3500 units will give a surplus. At
this realization, my eyes gleamed with a golden tint!

 

However, assuming a conversion rate of just 1 to 2%, selling 3500 units will
require 175,000 to 350,000 downloads.

This seems like larger numbers. If portals take on new games each day, it
must be close to impossible to gather the necessary exposure required to get
the required amount of downloads, not just talking about getting on the
portal in the first place..

 

What do you guys say? Are my assumptions correct?

Thanks for your time.

 

Cheers,

Gorm

--------------

IGDA Denmark Chapter Committee Member

Core Engine Programmer @ Deadline Games

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/casual_games/attachments/20070625/acf5ba44/attachment.htm>