7 ms·
I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no
by fnayr 10y ago
I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business.
The truth is there's plenty of us in the middle still. My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. The problem is not that there's no middle ground, it's that the everyone used to get guaranteed downloads, and with the removal of new releases and the never ending flood of apps, 90% of apps will get just about zero downloads after launch nowadays.
But there's still plenty of room for small studios like us who know their target audience and what works on the app store to make a sustainable business. So I'd say top 0.1% for the insane successes that can support hundreds of employees, but for a small studio, just getting in the top 5% can work.
If you're curious about numbers, check thinkgaming.com, to see that the top 200 grossing game is still pulling ~$10K a day on iPhone in the US alone. When you add all countries, tablets, and Android devices, you start to see you don't need a top 10 or even top 100 grossing app to make some serious cash.
So while it has gotten a lot tougher in the app store and it's increasingly difficult for newcomers with no experience to hit it big, there's still very much a thriving middle ground between the insane successes and the utter failures. I suspect that it's not well known is due to the fact that those in similar positions to us don't want to dish out the valuable knowledge they've acquired through years of experience that could only increase the competition.
- archagon 10y agoThe context is that this is Jeff Minter's blog. His iOS games have received high acclaim over the years, especially early on in the App Store.
- andybak 10y agoYep. I hope a few people reading this know who the hell Jeff Minter is and why he's worth listening to. (PS Jeff - if you're listening to. A new take on Llamatron would make me a very happy man)
- CmdrKrool 10y agoOne of those iOS games was in fact a new take on Llamatron: http://minotaurproject.co.uk/Minotaur/minotron.php http://minotaurproject.co.uk/Minotaur/minotron.php It's very good :). If it's not on the store anymore I hope you find some way to get hold of it.
- andybak 10y agoAh yes - I actually played it when I had a borrowed iPad for a while. It's essentially a port though. I'd love to see what Jeff would do with the Robotron format 25 years after his previous attempt. (This makes me wonder why - given his love of Williams arcade games - Jeff has never tried a take on Defender...)
- diziet 10y agoThe sentiment is totally right -- especially if you take other countries into account. The numbers you mentioned are pretty far off for US -- a typical rank 200 game in iPhone earns around $4000-6000 or so per day, but worldwide we can expect the top 100 app to earn around 100k / day on both platforms, and the top 200 app earns roughly half of that. This is wonderful because this kind of revenue can sustain a lot of companies and studios -- and it does not take ad revenue models into account. This is after apple/android 30% cut.
- KingMob 10y ago"A lot of companies"? With 2+ million apps in each app store, the top 200 is still the top .01%. It does nothing to refute the idea that app store income follows a power law distribution. Even if being in the top 5% was sustainable, that's still a far cry away from the rest of the computing field.
- uptown 10y agoAre the rough figures you cited the app purchase price, advertising revenue, in-app purchases or some combination of the three?
- diziet 10y ago99% of them are in-app purchase revenues.
- Lerc 10y agoI can't help but note that the only game in the top 200 that is not "Free" is Minecraft.
- monocasa 10y agoWell, there's free and there's 'free'.
- Lerc 10y agoIndeed, this is the "Top Grossing 200" I wonder what percentage could be classified as abusive software. If that's the path I have to take to make money on iOS, I'll take a path on a different platform.
- kbenson 10y agoI agree. All my interest in the platform (mobile in general) dried up when I realized people really wanted free, and the way to monetize that path was rife with dark patterns. I don't like playing games like that, why would I want to make one?
- colejohnson66 10y agoMoney and greed. It's as simple as that.
- mback00 10y agoPoor and stupid - Simple you are. In a civil society those that provide a utility (or "fun") to others are rewarded and incentivized.
- colejohnson66 10y agoI have nothing against people being rewarded for doing stuff others enjoy. What I have a problem with is the freemium model that seems to have taken over. It's nothing but greed what some developers are doing. I had quite a few games that I paid for. Then, one day, the app claims that "due to compatibility issues, I need to download The New $game to continue receiving updates". Then you go and look at the "new" version to find it's free and full of IAPs. THAT is nothing but greed.
- st3v3r 10y ago"I hear this myth" With it happening to more and more developers, you can't really call it a myth. You can say that maybe their stuff wasn't really that good, or that they're an outlier, but you can't call it a myth.
- eridius 10y agoAs the number of developers grows, so does the number of failure stories. That tells you nothing about the proportion of developers that are failing.
- Gibbon1 10y agoSuccess is based on market presence, knowing what you are doing, ability, and luck (and other things). With a lot of developers, many of them failing, the threshold of success is really high. That tends to say to me, avoid. There is also the problem of other people engaging in the sunk cost fallacy. If your competitors keep throwing good money after bad that tends thrash your business as well. Problem because there is always a greater fool with more money than you.
- partiallypro 10y agoSo would you say there is no middle-ground for new developers? It seems what you're saying is that people with an already locked-in user base continue to thrive while newcomer apps are crowded out, regardless of quality.
- fnayr 10y agoHmm, interesting question. I would say it's just rarer to make a sustainable business from it with no experience and existing users today, because you have no room for error or experimentation. For example it took us 5 failures before we figured out what worked. Unless you're rich or have very understanding investors, you just won't get 5 opportunities to fail today. Despite that, I still think anyone can make it to a sustainable small studio if they understand the app store market and their demo and have the resources to execute their plan.
- sago 10y agoWhich myth? Did we read the same article? > That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads Did he say anything like that? In the version I read he said that his games weren't making enough money to be viable, though he expected the market to be big enough to support their work. No mention of middles, Clash of Clans or anything. FWIW: I also let my Apple dev license lapse, for similar reasons. Perhaps I could have gained that 'valuable knowledge' through years of experience, to get to a point of making a modest return. Perhaps. But, like Jeff, I found other platforms to be much more financially viable.
- fnayr 10y agoSure, and to be fair to author, my point wasn't made to combat his article. I was more responding to the headline which reminded me of the "indieapocalypse" articles that make news all the time. Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you. If you found more viable platforms of course that makes sense to pursue. I think that's what more developers who complain about the meager app store sales ought to do (explore alternatives), rather than just whine about the apocalypse and hope their downloads magically change.
- chris_wot 10y agoI think it's more interesting that to keep maintaining the games he was forced to keep purchasing an Apple developer license, and that it was cheaper for him to pull the games than to risk reputation all damage with crashing apps, even if they are free. This genuinely sounds like a problem for Apple. Without a healthy App Store ecosystem there is little reason to purchase an iPad!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- sleepybrett 10y agoTo be fair, Llamasoft has be deliciously weird since I was a kid playing their stuff on the C64. It's not mainstream work. Their stuff generally looks terrible but is a delight to play. You live or die on the appstore based on screenshots and price point.
- ikeboy 10y ago>not only the top .1% >look at the Top 200 There are more than 200,000 apps out there.
- vitd 10y agoTrue, though they're not all games.
- fnayr 10y agoTrue, but this tell you nothing about percentage of profitable companies versus the number of companies who make games full time. Most games are not made by fulltime mobile dev companies doing so as their sole income. And my point with the top 200 was that that's way beyond profitability for a small studio. None of our apps are currently in the Top 1000 grossing (I don't think).
- emsy 10y agoCare to share a link to your games?
- IkmoIkmo 10y agoI really don't think the top 200 is as impressive a metric as you think for so called middle ground. I mean really, extend it to other industries. The top 200 highest grossing album, concert, football player, movie star, corporate executive etc, are all making big money too, and not because these industries have a great middle ground, but because the top 200 on the planet in just about anything is the top 0.1%. For example, I took a look at the very bottom of the list, the first company that had a report on its website I opened, which was Iggs, second to last game on the top 200 list, and it had 860 employees, mostly in low-cost areas like China. (more power to them, but for many HN readers, the prospect of competing with a team of 5 people who total your salary in the iOS game industry probably isn't very appealing). I'll grant, it's not their only game on the list, but if it was it'd still be a very sizeable studio. This is by no means a middle-ground company. The notion you don't need to be top 10 or top 100 and that top 200 is good, too, is meaningless when such companies can have almost 900 employees. Check the list and you'll find lots of big ones, from EA, Disney, Zynga to Bethesda, hanging around at the bottom of this ostensibly middle ground list. Anyway I do agree, there is a lot more middle ground than people make it out to be, but it definitely feels like an industry where mediocre talent doesn't really fly. Small studios have to do something special, unique, in a niche. That's a bit different from some other industries where you can make a living without really standing out. In that sense, the app store does feel like a place where the middle-ground is scarce and relatively competitive. And that's a new reality from 6 years ago, when you could still make money on flashlight apps, which is a lifetime ago in the appstore, but a short time for an entire industry in general to undergo such a paradigm shift. I think a lot of the myth you talk about is a narrative that contrasts the story we had not very long ago, when every app idea was relatively new and got the guaranteed downloads you mentioned already.
- moogleii 10y agoI don't think he's saying top 200/0.1% is middle ground. He said that level can probably support hundreds of employees, and that they take in ~10k/day, which is 7 figures annually. He's saying he himself is in the middle ground, which is a 2 man operation pulling in 6 figures.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pmarreck 10y agoIf you don't have a freemium game (I strongly dislike that business model), I would love to know what you're working on EDIT: Nevermind, think I found it down below: http://www.bmcm.co/ http://www.bmcm.co/
- gcb0 10y ago> top 100 > middle ground pick one.
- greggman 10y agoAre you sure it's 5%? Apparently 250,000 games shipped for iOS last year. If true you're suggesting of those quarter of a million games 12500 of them are making enough for a small studio? I have a feeling that's a pretty high number but I have no evidence to back it up. 1% would be still be 2500 games and even that seems high. I certainly haven't looked at 2500 games in the last year, probably not more than 100 if that (then again I'm not a the target consumer so I have no idea how many games people look at). Still 2500 games (1%) is over 6 games per day.
- joelrunyon 10y agoNot game-related, but in the "app utility" space, there's still a lot of room to grow if you're creative and can actually build tools that enhance people's lives. We've done 6 figures the last couple years on that alone.
- amelius 10y ago> My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. This statement does not say much, because in the worst case, that's $100.000 divided by two equals $50.000, which is less than average wage for programmers. In the best case, you make a pretty good salary :) Anyway, I just wish Apple would disclose some numbers about app sales. There's one thing worse than government regulating a market, and that is a company regulating it.
- michaelbuddy 10y agoYeah but if it's passive income for majority of time on existing titles, during the year that's great.
- coldtea 10y ago>This statement does not say much, because in the worst case, that's $100.000 divided by two equals $50.000, which is less than average wage for programmers. Depends on where you live. Not everybody lives in the US, or even the valley. Plus, even if $50000 is easy to pull in a lot of places as a programmer, with the mobile games they get to do it being their own bosses and creating the programs they want -- which beats working for a pointy haired boss or pulling all nighters for some "Facebook for turtles" startup.