When I started developing games, the first question that I had was how many downloads would I have in my first days. Of course, there is no definitive answer for that question because it depends on several factors (marketing budget, type of game,...).
But now, after 2 months for the release of our first game (Cut My Puzzle), and also talking to several developers, I think I can give you a ballpark of the daily downloads of a normal game. In fact, I think Cut My Puzzle reflects exactly that.
I call a normal game here a game in which the majority of your downloads are organic, what I think it is the reality for most indie developers who don't have lot of money to spend in markting/PR.
So, let's see how Cut my Puzzle has been performing until now.
But now, after 2 months for the release of our first game (Cut My Puzzle), and also talking to several developers, I think I can give you a ballpark of the daily downloads of a normal game. In fact, I think Cut My Puzzle reflects exactly that.
I call a normal game here a game in which the majority of your downloads are organic, what I think it is the reality for most indie developers who don't have lot of money to spend in markting/PR.
So, let's see how Cut my Puzzle has been performing until now.
The first thing that attracts the attention is the pick in the iOS version as soon as it was released. That is because we were featured in the New and Noteworthy section of iTunes in the Puzzle and Family category. The game was featured during 1 week and after that we saw the number of downloads decreasing until it stabilized around 50 downloads per day (d.d).
On the other hand, Google Play started with very downloads (<10 d.d.) and now it almost with the same rate of iOS downloads.
Amazon Store has very low downloads and it is the only store that we have a free and paid version of Cut My Puzzle. The graphic reflects the free version. Amazon has recently expanded to more 200 countries, so I would not be surprised if the d.d. starts to increase.
If we take the average daily downloads from that period above (~2 months), we have:
As you can imagine such numbers of downloads are very low if you want to make money from your game but I think that it is what you would have if you simply launch a traditional game in the market (like Cut My Puzzle which is a jigsaw puzzle game) and do not spend time/money in marketing it properly.
Something that I will try to do now is optimize the search keywords for Cut My Puzzle in the iTunes Store (what is called ASO - App Store Optimization). Some developers say that you can expect thousands of daily downloads if you have a good ASO for you app/game. You example you can find here.
I hope you find these numbers useful and I will continue to post more statistics about our games specially as we try new different marketing techniques.
See you.
On the other hand, Google Play started with very downloads (<10 d.d.) and now it almost with the same rate of iOS downloads.
Amazon Store has very low downloads and it is the only store that we have a free and paid version of Cut My Puzzle. The graphic reflects the free version. Amazon has recently expanded to more 200 countries, so I would not be surprised if the d.d. starts to increase.
If we take the average daily downloads from that period above (~2 months), we have:
- iTunes Store: ~70 daily downloads
- Google Play Store: ~28 daily downloads
- Amazon Store: ~9 daily downloads
As you can imagine such numbers of downloads are very low if you want to make money from your game but I think that it is what you would have if you simply launch a traditional game in the market (like Cut My Puzzle which is a jigsaw puzzle game) and do not spend time/money in marketing it properly.
Something that I will try to do now is optimize the search keywords for Cut My Puzzle in the iTunes Store (what is called ASO - App Store Optimization). Some developers say that you can expect thousands of daily downloads if you have a good ASO for you app/game. You example you can find here.
I hope you find these numbers useful and I will continue to post more statistics about our games specially as we try new different marketing techniques.
See you.