Wait, so in order to use the SDK developers are forced to publish through the company AND the company takes the first $1000 in revenue? Isn't that really bad for developers?
Mobile games are so hit and miss I bet most people using this SDK will never top $1000 in revenues and will never see a dime. But if their app does blow up and get popular, they won't be able to get the brand recognition that comes with it. I am struggling to find the benefits of using this :/
We are working on allowing folks to use it without publishing through us. What kind of pricing model would you like to see?
Here's why you want to use it:
-It's so easy to use a couple high school students build a social game with it that's doing quite well.
-It leads you to build the type of game that has a higher chance of succeeding.
-When you publish with us, we produce all the art and music for your game at no upfront cost to you and promote your game. This is easily a $1000 value. We got Name That Jam! To the top 25 Trivia and Music games in the App Store for 2 weeks :)
I agree that the art and music is a $1000 value but I don't like that it comes off the top of the revenue. Why not charge 40% from day one (so you keep 10%) and give an optional $1000 production charge for producing the art and music?
Is it because you don't want bad art/music in games you publish for other people? I can see where that gets tricky.
The people we work with generally don't have $1000 up front and one of their main draws in publishing with us is that they have no other way of getting art/music. For those who have art already we shift that fixed cost towards promotion. Don't forget that we also offer code-level support to a lot of our devs and do extra stuff for them like optimize their OpenGraph actions. It ends up being a really good deal.
I should also point out that by using the SDK you can make three games in the time it would have taken you to make one. The Ghost template game was built and pushed to the App Store in the span of a few days.
That's a good call IMHO. I find this intriguing but I wouldn't know where to start to get the art work and wouldn't want to throw down $1000 just to find out whether my idea appealed to the marketplace.
Gotcha. It is an interesting business plan for sure. I think if you guys can figure out how to allow devs to use the SDK under their own brand it will be awesome.
Pricing wise, it is nice to give people some money. Perhaps 30% for the first 3000 dollars? It is just nice for beginners to get hooked, and get some money, even if it is just a token.
Mobile games are so hit and miss I bet most people using this SDK will never top $1000 in revenues and will never see a dime. But if their app does blow up and get popular, they won't be able to get the brand recognition that comes with it. I am struggling to find the benefits of using this :/