4 ms·
I think this is not a great business model. You are planning to take the distributor portion of revenue but also take the additional risk of making the art. T
by pfisch 14y ago
I think this is not a great business model. You are planning to take the distributor portion of revenue but also take the additional risk of making the art. This could maybe be okay by itself but probably not. However, additionally it sounds like you want to bring xblig quality games made by young people to ios. Something like 90% of xblig games make less than $200, on the more competitive ios app store they will probably make less.
You need to change your business model drastically for this to succeed. I don't think you will break even with the current business model, much less make a profit.
Most people's first 4 video games fail spectacularly, the younger they are the more likely this is.
There are some exceptions but I doubt they will cover your mounting losses. I am the only person I have ever heard of whose first video game made it on to Steam, but while my game made it on I think many many games did not. Also I was a grad student in engineering at the time, not a high school student. You are essentially trying to VC video game development but only take 30%. This will not work with a 30% cut, and it won't work anyway unless you become a lot more selective on which games you choose to invest in.
- bazookaBen 14y agolike any other VC, i'm sure they're hoping for a one hit wonder. going the premium account route might be more feasible. Sell premium tutorials, assets, etc. But you're going to need a huge user base in this case.
- jvrossb 14y agoWe have a game that's currently in review by Apple that hopefully will give a sense of just how good these games can be:) The median for games on the App Store is also a lot higher than $200 - in the thousands of dollars. I think we'll break even fine on plenty of games and by virtue of opening up iOS game development to so many potential talented developers we'll have the opportunity to publish real gems. Only time will tell whether the model works. I'm curious - what cut would you say we should take?
- pfisch 14y agoI'm not sure how much you provide beyond art, also an sdk? It sounds like you are essentially a publisher. Since you are giving a royalty advance in the form of art, software support, handling distribution and possibly marketing. You are then giving devs a royalty rate of 70%. My understanding is that publishers usually take more than 50% of revenue. I don't know if you should take that much or restructure your payment system, and honestly I don't think being a publisher for tiny xblig like games makes sense.
- jvrossb 14y agoNoted. Check out http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elemental-fury/id532042459?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elemental-fury/id532042459?mt..., we just released it, is this the type of game you mean when you say xblig like games? It's an honest question I'm not particularly familiar with xblig.