From Codea version 1.5 I want to make a game, but I don’t know is it worth it: the work and money for developer account and other costs.
I want to make a pretty fine game, say those who have seen the prototype.
So, I wonder how much money won some games, such as: Touchline, Magica Gems, etc.
In fact that is the question: How much money have you earned through the app store?
Georgian,
Reefwing has a pretty balanced view of this in his tutorial:
http://codeatuts.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/tutorial-12-submitting-to-app-store.html
@Georgian - check out this post as well: http://codeatuts.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/interlude-14-update-on-minesweeper-sales.html
Which admittedly is for a pretty crap implementation of a classic game.
Just to give you a feel for what pushing apps out with no effort (other than posting a note to this board) to make anyone aware of their existence, here are the to date downloads for my three apps.
ChipBots (free): 2409
ScramWords (.99): 129
Bull Puckey (.99): 40
Naturally, the sales on ScrawWords and BP are disappointing. I’d like to think that BP in particular has real potential to move some units. On the other hand, I’ve done nothing to make that happen, not even sent review copies to sites. The biggest reason being that there’s a version 1.2 coming for ScramWords that adds some new features (and more than doubles the dictionary size) and a 1.1 for Bull Puckey that adds new holes, new enemies, and some bug fixes. Once those are out, I’ll make at least a token effort to draw some attention.
In the meantime, I’ve pretty much cleared enough to cover my dev license for the year and the cost of Codea, but not much more.
Does that help?
I’ve also been wondering what profits people are gaining, I suppose as long as you have a genuine idea and some screenshots and a video that catches people’s eye that’s the selling point, the app itself is for the reviews which also count towards the selling point depending on if they’re mainly good or bad, but I don’t see why codea apps couldn’t make as much as normal apps if the work is put in, I’ve been working on a game I want to eventually release but I’m busy enough as it is so I do it in my spare time, this means that development is very slow and not motivated, which leads to poor apps
To add some data, Cargo-Bot has been downloaded over 300,000 times.
Though it had the advantage of being the fist game programmed on iPad, and it’s free. We also made a video, press release and small website for it. But I like to think most of the downloads it gets now (~200 per day) are due to it being a polished, fun game.
Edit: I just checked and Cargo-Bot actually gets between 200-500 downloads per day.
Thanks guys for your replies! Currently I realized the concept on a desktop computer using a 3D render software thought a 3D rendering farm. 2D images were drawn into a 3D rendering software.
Yet I am not convinced, I dream to win at least 2-3 thousand dollars or maybe 10k USD.
What do you think?
The amount you make is all relative to the polish of the app and who your target audience is. As well as how well you support and update your app. My wifes side scroller/ action rpg, although not made in code, does very well. The trick seems to be in app purchases. When her game is free to download, it becomes one of the top grossing months. It also has to do with advertising. if you can get your app spotlighted in new and noteworthy you can expect a nice jump ahead of the curve. A great app that doesn’t get noticed will not net you large sums of cash.
You need to know how to promote it. I only sold 13 of Lizzy Land Defense. I was kind of dissapointed.
Hey, @ScramWords is all the way into 4 figures now after a couple of updates. On the last update, I did the very simple thing of generating 10 free codes and sending a press release to ten sites that review apps, along with a free code. Only a couple actually reviewed the app, but they said nice things (including noting that it had been developed in Codea on the iPad, which I put in the PR) and the downloads immediately jumped from 10-20 a day to over 200 on the peak day.
On the next update (a sneaky bug fix and yet another clean up of the interface) I’m going to send out another PR and make the game free for a week as a test.
Granted, this is still a long way from Angry Birds (in fact, it’s a couple of orders of magnitude away from CargoBot), but it beats what I managed with BullPuckey. I considered that a fairly neat little game, and was quite happy with my did-it-myself graphics, but the total sales of the game is still less than 200.
I think part of it is the problem of Apple not supporting limited free trials. Basically if it’s free loads of people will download it just to try. The problem is, if they tried it for free, but they have the full version because you discounted it, they don’t need to buy it.
I track apps that were paid but temporarily free and get loads of good stuff that way. Basically apple have forced devs to give away their app to get chart position and then hope to make sales off that. Or you go the in app purchase root, but that often seems agressive in the way most apps do it.
A compromise is to make 2 apps: a free one with limited levels, and a paying one with all levels.
^ That is how you give your sample of the game, and if people like it enough, they will buy it.
You don’t see it in too many games anymore, but you’ll see like the Angry Birds lite version, which is only a few levels compared to the full game.
In total my sales free & paid of all my apps, Including my apps for clients managed under my enterprise account (Using a few different SDK’s obviously)
Would be about 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 (Primarily Freemium apps & Client Work )
@ThermoApps could you give more details? I assume this is professional apps, not game? Considering app-store only, what is your best success? (app, number of sales, unit price)?
@ThermoApps From looking at the applications made on ThermoApps, none even have ratings, so as stated above, how did exactly did you make $1,000,000+ in the application store.
I don’t recognize any of your applications in the top charts.
On Topic: I hope to just release an application to the app store, it’s been one of my dreams to make a game for years now, and I can’t wait to hopefully do so. Not to mention nothing would be better than to grab quite a few bucks from doing it too! 
@ThermoApps I was checking your website looking at some of your games. As a suggestion, you may want to have an App Store link for each of your games. Also, some in game screenshots would be nice! Tried searching the App Store, what market are you listed in? I can’t find any on the US market.
@BriarFox I found his games, and if you click the picture I believe it takes you to it in the application store.
I’m pretty sure I saw his games, but from clicking that or something that redirected me to it.
I only get the icon .pngs. What app market are you in?@Briarfox I’m in the US if that is what you mean.
Let me try and get redirected again!
Hold on.
Oh
Just type in:
Gravity Bounce!
The title has the: ! In it too.