From the title, I really really thought this was going to be about paying for downloads to force your way in to the top charts. I'm very glad to see that this is actually a great success story instead.
Thanks! Have to say the idea of paid downloads has always been gross to us, definitely hurts the ecosystem and tips things over in favor to companies like EA who have cash to burn. We work pretty hard to pick up new fans, then produce apps that they'll actually find cool and pick up on their own :)
MacHeist, on which this is apparently based, sells a bundle of software for far less than their usual price. It's not the same as paying for downloads, but...
Is there more to the app than a sudoku rehash, a Rush Hour rehash, Sokoban, and a sliding tile game?
I mean, those are all reasonably nice puzzles and should be easily worth a $1 download just as is, but that seems like a crazy amount of activity for slight variations to common puzzles wrapped up in some pretty gloss.
As an iPhone developer (well, mainly designer, but I also write Cocoa) I can tell you that thinking it's "some pretty gloss" is a big mistake. It's not "gloss" it's incredible over-execution and it's what separates a regular app from a blockbuster app. This is especially true in games. The audio design, impeccable visual design and extreme planning of every single user interaction is what takes an app to the top.
By dismissing immaculate execution and over a year's worth of work from some of the top game & visual designers in the iPhone industry as "some pretty gloss" you're completely missing why it (and almost every other Tap Tap Tap app) has went #1.
Yeah, I understand that the visuals are what gets the masses to jump on it - especially since that's basically all you have to base your opinion on in the app store.
That they went almost 2/3 of the development time before plugging the games in is also an indication that they know exactly where they need to focus to make it such a hit.
I think a few years of desktop linux experience combined with a love of ugly-but-fun 8- and 16-bit console games has just left me in the habit of looking beyond the shiny to identify the crunchy gameplay lurking underneath.
There's also the prize of a free game at the end that I won't ever play and don't even particularly like. But that gives it a perceived value of the retail cost of that game.
Yeah, they got my purchase, but the actual game lost my interest after about a day.
Given that, a $1 game only really has to hold my interest for a day so I'm not that miffed. But the $1 games that I play for weeks are the ones that I really love, unlike this one.
We were actively developing the app for over a year and a half, in part due to a reboot midway. (The safe, prize and much of the game didn't exist until midway through!)
The App Store is very momentum driven. If you can get your app into the Top 25 Paid with a high star rating, via social media, emails, etc., you are golden. There are lots of users like me that will download almost anything that is highly rated, popular, and $1.
Paid downloads work for the same reason, although usually the star ratings drop quickly once the natural downloads exceed the paid-for ones, so they drop out of the list fast. You still do need a quality app at the end of the day.
(I also wonder how many downloads are driven by some of the unusual uses of the iPhone hardware that I think people would talk about to friends.)
(I also wonder how many downloads are driven [redacted])
Way to spoil what many (including taptaptap in this post) want to keep under wrap. :)
But I would be very surprised if many downloads were for that. For one thing, it's not discussed much and the other thing is that it's a tiny part of the game. (to which I actually didn't pay more attention than that actually)
Unfortunately, that's always a tough part when trying to learn from taptaptap's successes. It's much harder to be motivated to work on a tease before launch, a tweetblast, etc. when you don't have an audience yet...
However, as always, it didn't happen overnight and their audience is not the only reason to their success: one thing to learn is that everything they do is highly polished and well designed. They simply do great work. Working on that brings results (personal satisfaction if anything) without an audience.
As evidence of that the success of Tiny Wings in the App Store.
This is great. Although I'm reminded of Halo Reach doing $200M in 1 day. Clearly not the same scale of product, but just reminds me of how much money console games make. And does make me wonder if the .99 price point will make it hard to make a lot of money with mobile games, even with hits. With that said, there's not many Halo Reach's that have ever been made.
While that is quiet an impressive figure, you've got to keep in mind that it wasn't just Halo Reach. The Halo franchise was 10 years in the making when Reach was released.
The .99 price point makes developing anything but mega-hits a waste of time. I routinely see comments complaining that a $1.99 app is "too expensive" even if a desktop app of similar functionality would easily sell for 10x that price.
Congrats, guys!