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iOS Game Revenue Survey

(42 posts) (24 voices)

Started 8 months ago by Matt Rix
Latest reply from MikeSz

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Matt Rix
Member

Hey guys, Owen Goss had the great idea to do an iOS game dev revenue survey. He'll be releasing the results in about a week. The idea is to get a *wide* range of results, so please fill it out, whether you've made 7 cents or $7 or $700,000. The survey is here. I've included his original message below:

Hi everyone:

I launched a survey today to try to gather some data about what the iOS games market looks like. I've been building games for iOS for over 3 years and I keep reading articles that speculated on "average" iOS game revenue, while no one talks about things like "median" and "standard deviation".

Given that most of us are indies and don't have the resources to hire large market research firms, I thought I'd put together a survey and share the results publicly. Please check out my blog post on the subject and take the survey, if you're making iOS games. I'll be posting the results next week to share with the iOS game dev community.

Blog post: iOS Game Revenue Survey
Direct survey link: Survey Monkey

Please help spread the word however you can! Even if you only have one game that made $17, please fill it out. The more people we have take the survey, the more representative and useful the data will be.

Thanks!
Owen

Posted 8 months ago #
cocos
Member

@Matt Rix Thanks! This is important Survey for our own good! For its own sake, Apple (which has this data) will never release it to us.
Lets take a minute and support the Survey right now!

Edit: Done in 24 seconds. It was 8 easy questions... I wish there was one more question: "How long did you take to develop the game?"

Posted 8 months ago #
bazcocos
Member

I filled it in. I do think the results will be massively skewed, since by definition people who made zero and gave-up aren't here to fill in surveys.

I recall a while ago somebody used publicly available data to make an estimate of how many downloads the average app gets -- it was a very small number. So, I expect the real median to be something close to zero, sadly.

edit- I think this article is the one I read before. Yeah, people just mention 'average' which is not very useful, since Angry Birds screws that up ;)

Posted 8 months ago #
lws
Member

done, fingers crossed to see some interesting data

Posted 8 months ago #
varedis
Moderator

Wouldn't it skew the results slightly with the fact that you can't put a decimal number in the money made fields?

Posted 8 months ago #
phil_me_up
Member

I'll do this once my app is realise. Not sure my hopeful estimates are that useful!

Posted 8 months ago #
clarus
Member

I think it's also skewed by the fact that it's for games, not apps. Even with cocos2d, there are plenty of apps that aren't games.

It would also be interesting to see another survey for free apps that covers number of downloads and conversion/in-app purchase rates.

Posted 8 months ago #
cocos
Member

@clarus Good idea! Since Survey Monkey is free, we can ourselves (collectively) organize survey for free apps. Shell we?

Posted 8 months ago #
Matt Rix
Member

@clarus @cocos the point for this one is to get stats on games, but feel free to go make one for apps as well.

@varedis the lack of a decimal might skew results sliiiightly, hah ;)

@bazcocos the average downloads is just calculated by taking the total number of downloads and dividing it by the total number of apps. The number of apps on the store is already totally bogus, because it includes tons of crappy "single serving" apps (ie. Toronto Weather, New York Weather, Boston Weather), and it includes tons of other awful apps that have literally a couple hours of work put into them.

While yeah, there are a few people that have dropped out, that's not really important. What's interesting is to figure out how the App Store is for indie game devs *right now*.

Posted 8 months ago #
otrain13
Member

Hi everyone. Thanks to those of you who have taken the survey!

@clarus, @cocos - Survey Monkey is only free until you have 100 responses, and this survey is quickly approaching 200 responses. :-) However, I'd love to see a separate survey for apps, not games. I decided to limit the survey to just games, because I see games and apps as very different markets. Apps often sell for more money, have different users, etc. Since I'm a game developer, I wanted to see games numbers, and I felt like it was something the whole iOS game dev community could benefit from.

@bazcocos - I agree with what @mattrix said. The goal is to try to capture what the state of the market is right now, or at least for the last 12 months. There are general questions about lifetime revenue, etc, but the really interesting data to me is about the current state of the store. Also, I intend to make no claims about statistical validity of the data when I publish it (there will be big disclaimers). Because it's an online, voluntary survey, I will have no way of knowing margins of error, etc. But I figure some data is better than no data. :-)

Owen

Posted 8 months ago #
jptsetung
Member

Has voted.

Posted 8 months ago #
cb31416
Member

@Matt Rix:
@otrain13:
You can also use Google forms for the survey:
https://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87809

I'm not sure if they have a limit for responses, but I don't think so.

Posted 8 months ago #
SpLogic
Member

This is a great idea. My first game is on the way. Can't wait to see the results. Thanks for the efforts.

Posted 8 months ago #
Aorata
Member

Thanks for the effort!!!
Can't wait for the results! If my app goes out before the survey is over I'll be sure to participate!
Cheers!

Posted 8 months ago #
Scryb
Member

Cool! I was trying to gather some more personal responses on this topic right here on the forum, but I guess people just didn't like putting themselves out there. An anonymous survey on the other hand let's anyone commit much easier.

I also think it's better with a survey only taken by us who are (more or less) serious about this. The (tens of?) thousands of "budding iOS devs" who put in a month or two, release an unfinished game and give up after selling less than 10 copies are really not doing the same thing we are, and so their results are quite irrelevant to us.

Posted 8 months ago #
DonomaGames
Member

Done.

But my gross revenue is far, far higher than net.

Posted 8 months ago #
Aorata
Member

Oh snap, you're the guy that made trainyard? So happy to see success stories participating on this forum!
By the way, trainyard is awesome!

Posted 8 months ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Oh snap, you're the guy that made trainyard? So happy to see success stories participating on this forum!
By the way, trainyard is awesome!

Hah, yep that's me. Glad you like it :)

Yeah I used to participate here a bit more, but I've been super busy, just really trying to stay focused on making stuff.

Posted 8 months ago #
otrain13
Member

Hi everyone:

The survey closes on Monday at noon, EDT! Please take a minute to fill it out, if you haven't already. Thanks!

Blog post: iOS Game Revenue Survey
Direct survey link: Survey Monkey

Owen

Posted 8 months ago #
RossyP
Member

Completed. $15! I'm so rich :(

Anyone wants to increase that amount my game (Space Shooter 1) is here, iPad support update submitted to Apple as I write this.

Posted 8 months ago #
otrain13
Member

The iOS Game Revenue Survey closes today at noon EDT! Last chance to get your numbers in!

http://bit.ly/iossurvey

Owen

Posted 8 months ago #
otrain13
Member

The survey is now closed! Thanks to everyone who participated. I'm going to start going over the data now, and I hope to have the results written up in the next day or two. It will all be posted on my blog here:

http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/

I'll post a link to these forums when it's ready.

Owen

Posted 8 months ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

Guys,

I asked Owen if he was going to make the raw data available to us and he said "no." His point is that it would violate developers' privacy. I feel that the raw data should be posted - that there may be insights to be gained there that Owen may not see on his own. Also, I feel that the data came from the community and should go back to the same community.

I dont think he will change his mind. But Id still like to get developers' opinions. If you submitted your own data to this survey, would you want that raw data to remain proprietary to Owen alone - or available to everyone?

Ill say upfront I could be wrong about this - and that most developers dont want the raw data out there - I dunno so Im asking.

Thanks.

Posted 7 months ago #
abitofcode
Moderator

The questionnaire was completed on the basis that the results would be summarised. If Owen had stated that he was going to make the raw data available from the start then fair enough but that wasn't the case. My guess is there would have been less interest from developers to give over what could be sensitive information.

Posted 7 months ago #
zaaroth
Member

I agree with him. The survey didnt inform upfront the raw data would be provided afterwards, so it shouldnt.

You cant change the rules of the game once its started.

Posted 7 months ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

Like you could look at the top of any graph and thats Matt Rix's numbers revealed! ;) Owen may need to use an exponential y-axis.

Posted 7 months ago #
abitofcode
Moderator

Owen may need to use an exponential y-axis.

I believe from his twitter feed that's exactly what he's done ;)

Posted 7 months ago #
otrain13
Member

The survey results are out!

http://bit.ly/iosrevsurvey

Please enjoy responsibly. :)

Owen

Posted 7 months ago #
Questor
Member

Owen,

Very interesting and informative!

One concern though:
Since a fairly wide net was cast and there are, unfortunately, people who enjoy messing with surveys, I am wondering if you got any submissions that were obviously fabrications and that you had to completely toss in garbage?

I guess I am asking if there was any type of validation/verification of the survey submissions?

In any case, this is still very useful information and I really appreciate your time and effort in pulling all this information together and making it available to the developer community.

Cheers,
Q

Posted 7 months ago #
otrain13
Member

@Questor - Yes, that's a very valid concern. The validation I did was mostly around the 12-month data, which is why I know that the questions confused people. However, when looking at the other data, there were no obvious statistical outliers. When I experimented with graphing things in more detail (which, unfortunately, revealed too much individual data), I could see that the data tended to fit the trend lines. Aside from that, yes, it is possible that some people submitted bogus data. However, with 252 respondents, hopefully it gets sufficiently minimized when dealing with things like medians and percentiles. I hope that makes sense.

Owen

Posted 7 months ago #

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