next »

[TeeGee]

I've been going through Cinders pre-order data, and realized that my Mac sales are shit! They contribute to only 11% of total copies sold.

I know - from my own and other developers' experience - that in the good old days, Mac sales could easily get to 50% and more. But in the good old days, any reasonable game had a large chance of being featured on apple.com after just one press release. While now they won't promote a non-AppStore product.

AppStore in itself is fine, and I may try it later, but:
- I want to raise awareness of my game, and maybe get few more pre-orders, which is impossible with AppStore.
- It seems silly to give Apple a 30% cut for selling to my own potential audience.
- App Store - like any portal - is more suited for cheaper casual mass-market titles, that can easily get to the top charts. I don't see much future for more niche stuff like ours there.

We don't really have an existing Mac audience, and I don't have much experience in promoting to the OSX users, too. So I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong, or is this simply how things are these days.

If you're an indie with a multi-platform game, would you mind sharing:
- How much percentage your Mac sales contribute? Has it lowered recently?
- Are there any good channels to promote your games to the OSX users? I know of PRmac.com.
- Are there any interesting game websites that cater to Mac audience specifically?
- Am I doing something obviously wrong?
 

[Ouren]

Have you considered a big push to get on Steam?

Most of the hardcore Mac users I know (including myself) use Mac Steam.

Mac games on Steam are few and far between, and Mac users seems to snap up whatever they can get their hands on on the service.

I know it's a huge extra step, but I really think it might be worth it, especially if you were to participate in SteamPlay.

Moreover, I'd say that Apple users in general are spoiled with pricing structures, making $20 seem like a lot of money (I know that in reality, people need to make money) but most mac users only throw down money to more apple products. See how many free and .99c things are on the App Store, not to mention the iOS Store.

This is also why I think skipping the Mac App Store might be better, because that 30% is too much cut for not enough people buying the game.

Know what I mean?

[hanako]

I know it's a huge extra step, but I really think it might be work it

... that implies that there's an actual step that can be taken.

There's a lot of good games out there that are not on Steam. It usually isn't because they haven't asked to be.

(Standard disclaimer - I'm not talking about MY games, I mean games I've paid money for from other people!)

[Ouren]

I know it's a huge extra step, but I really think it might be work it

... that implies that there's an actual step that can be taken.

There's a lot of good games out there that are not on Steam. It usually isn't because they haven't asked to be.

(Standard disclaimer - I'm not talking about MY games, I mean games I've paid money for from other people!)

I've never personally had any experience with Steam like that, and I know it would prove incredibly difficult, but I'm sure if you just bothered valve about it non-stop twitter/facebook/emails that there'd be a shot.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there's already another big thread about how hard it is for indies to get on steam and how fans tend to believe that getting on steam is as easy as emailing gabe; realistically, only about 1% of commercial indie games will get on steam, even if you exclude casual games

[Ouren]

there's already another big thread about how hard it is for indies to get on steam and how fans tend to believe that getting on steam is as easy as emailing gabe; realistically, only about 1% of commercial indie games will get on steam, even if you exclude casual games

1% or not, I'd say it's worth a shot.
I also think that Cinder's been seen around the webz, and is sort-of-known about by internet-savy game folks.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah but you suggest it as if he never thought of it. of course he'll try to get his game on steam, he would be crazy not to attempt it. so your suggestion seems a bit superfluous. the "Have you considered trying to get on Steam?" thing is sort of a meme now, or at least an in-joke among indie devs since they get asked that so often by their fans

it's sort of like suggesting to someone who is trying to market their book: "have you considered trying to get on the oprah book club?"

[Ouren]

yeah but you suggest it as if he never thought of it. of course he'll try to get his game on steam, he would be crazy not to attempt it. so your suggestion seems a bit superfluous. the "Have you considered trying to get on Steam?" thing is sort of a meme now, or at least an in-joke among indie devs since they get asked that so often by their fans

it's sort of like suggesting to someone who is trying to market their book: "have you considered trying to get on the oprah book club?"

 

[TeeGee]

If the only chance to sell my game is to get on Steam, AppStore or another portal, I'm fucked. Is that even "independent" anymore?

But I'd think that Steam and portals should affect PC gamers as much as Mac ones, while I still get good number of sales on the PC and atrocious on the Mac. So - unless Mac is a sign of what's to come to PC soon - I'm probably doing something wrong and could just promote the game better. Mind you, this is about promoting and direct sales, so portals are out of question. Even if I want to get on them eventually to boost profits.

It's kinda weird. I expected that there're more indies on these forums who have commercial games out and could share their Mac vs PC ratio. Maybe they moved on?

Georgina, how are your Mac sales these days? Noticed any change recently?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

have you tried the indiegamer.com forums? i'd imagine a few there would have some experience with this

but yeah, i've heard that mac sales are a lot better than windows sales, but i don't know if that's changed or not. i did look up whether the mac market share is down or up, and as far as i can tell it's actually *down* -- from the numbers i found, 16% of pc's were macs in 2006, now it's only 10% five years later. so perhaps lower mac sales can be due to fewer mac users?

another thought: perhaps visual novel players are not those likely to own a mac? macs tend to be owned by a more casual audience because they have a reputation of being easier to use, and visual novels are a somewhat isolated, niche genre. so it could be true that certain genres do better on mac than on windows, and vice versa, and that visual novels just happen to be a genre that does better on windows than mac?

[TeeGee]

have you tried the indiegamer.com forums? i'd imagine a few there would have some experience with this

Tried. Not much response yet either.

but yeah, i've heard that mac sales are a lot better than windows sales, but i don't know if that's changed or not. i did look up whether the mac market share is down or up, and as far as i can tell it's actually *down* -- from the numbers i found, 16% of pc's were macs in 2006, now it's only 10% five years later. so perhaps lower mac sales can be due to fewer mac users?

Mac share may be down, but overall hardware sales are up. So while there's more computers in general in the world, amount of people in first world countries with Macs grows.

another thought: perhaps visual novel players are not those likely to own a mac? macs tend to be owned by a more casual audience because they have a reputation of being easier to use, and visual novels are a somewhat isolated, niche genre. so it could be true that certain genres do better on mac than on windows, and vice versa, and that visual novels just happen to be a genre that does better on windows than mac?

I asked other VN developers about this. Their Mac sales used to be very high. This is what I've got from Celso Riva of WinterWolves:

My Mac sales went down from 50-60% of 2005 to 20% (or maybe even lower, haven't checked last months sales) to 2011, despite my overall sales increasing a lot. Ironically if this trend continues, in 2-3 years Linux user will be more valuable than Mac  I think most Mac players were lured into the iOS, especially now that with the iPad you aren't forced to play in a minuscule screen. Or maybe most of them buy only in the MacAppstore (missing out many good games that for one reason or another can't get in it).
The bottom line is, that unless you have a topseller, while just 2-3 years ago I'd have said you'd be crazy not supporting the Mac, now I say that if is too much effort you can safely ignore it and get on iOS instead.

Sounds grim .

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

that makes sense -- that mac users would play ipad games rather than mac games. could always port cinders to ipad!

[TeeGee]

I'm not fully convinced by this. Celso also mentioned to me earlier that iPad sales of his games are terrible. Also, iOS devices are available to all people, not just Mac users. They are very widespread in general. Almost everyone these days seems to have an iPhone/iPod/iPad, but that doesn't mean they have a Macintosh too.

That's why I would like to see what other developers think. One person's stats and opinion is interesting, but hardly constitutes a reliable data.

[hanako]

I expect I got into the mac side of things a little bit late. My mac sales have never been as great as some people's... but yes, my most recent release, the mac percentage has plummeted.

But other than the old free apple listings I've never made much effort to reach out to mac users, so my figures aren't the most meaningful.

[Giaddon]

I don't sell games or have access to special numbers, so here's some blatant speculation. Isn't it just during this last year or so that Valve has really pushed Mac on Steam? Maybe a lot of Mac users who used to comb the wilds of the Internet for the rare game that would work for them are now content to focus on a centralized service for games. I wonder what the Steam Mac numbers are like.

[Craig Stern]

I've only released one game with separate Mac and Windows versions, and that was two years ago. Total sales since then break down to 88% Windows and 12% Mac. If it weren't for the extreme ease of releasing on multiple platforms through Adobe AIR, I don't think I'd bother with pure Mac ports going forward.

As for marketing, I mostly just sent out promotional material to every Mac gaming blog I could find, and got news stories posted in all of them. It was a little half-assed, admittedly--I'm sure I could have done more.