Warning: This is a long, data-heavy post covering sales and related areas.
Before I get to the actual sales numbers for JoyJoy and Crossfire, I want to start with some supplementary graphs of visitors to this website and the soundtrack hosting website. First the “Soundtrack Buzz”:
You’ll notice the timeframe only covers the launch of Crossfire (July 7th) and beyond. That’s because of the ~1,200 visits the soundtrack pages have had, over 95% of them came after Crossfire launched. With JoyJoy I sent out a separate release about the soundtrack being available, and it wasn’t free. For Crossfire the soundtracks were made free to download and the announcement was included with the “Crossfire is out” announcements.
The highest day was July 8th with 319 visitors, while July 11th also saw a big spike. The July 8th spike was a combination of many websites including this one, though an article from The Examiner was the biggest referrer. July 11th was mostly from a website called mysavings.com where both games’ soundtracks were listed because they’re free. I don’t think the soundtrack site has any significant impact on sales, but perhaps over the long-term it’ll have a small positive impact due to multiple impressions of seeing Radiangames.
Here we have slightly more interesting data, aka unique daily visitors to this website since the beginning of the year. I’ve noted the spikes in visitors with numbers. #1 is the initial announcement of radiangames and JoyJoy. #2 is a little less certain, but I believe it’s being linked by the creator of Monaco on his twitter feed shortly after he won the Independent Games Festival grand prize (I mentioned Monaco in a post-GDC recap). #3 is a collection of smaller spikes marking the launch of JoyJoy. #4 is the announcement of Crossfire, and #5 is the launch of Crossfire.
I think it’s a positive sign the spikes are now getting bigger and more sustained, along with the lower dips being higher as well. It’s pretty much impossible to measure or detect an effect on sales since Xbox 360 browsing and web browsing are fairly exclusive, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my future releases have an advantage over similar games from new developers.
I don’t have graphs of Twitter followers and Facebook fans, but they’ve both been increasing at a steady but very slow rate. On Twitter Radiangames has 60 followers, while on Facebook there are 135 fans of Radiangames. While I mention both in my press releases, I don’t have them linked from this site, and I pretty much only use them to redirect people back to this site when I post a new entry.
Now onto the sales data, starting with JoyJoy’s long-term report:
* Click on sales charts to see slightly bigger, unsquished versions
This chart shows a typical sales curve for Xbox Live Indie Games: A large spike at the beginning, followed by a much steadier and lower amount of sales over a long period of time. Nothing too surprising, but when we eliminate the early spike (cut out the first 4 days of sales), other patterns emerge that can be analyzed further:
Now it’s much easier to see the effect of events outside of the launch window. The most significant event was getting selected for IGN Top Picks (in the 4th slot) for 3 weeks. During this time, JoyJoy was easily visible in a location that required less work to find than its normal locations. The rest of the time, JoyJoy was on the Top Rated charts and Contest Finalists list, but only in slots #11 and below (it moved around on Top Rated for a while). Right now it’s currently located in slot #12 for both lists in the US (the US accounts for most sales/downloads).
For Crossfire, there are 12 days worth of data now:
It’s difficult to get any new information out of this graph compared to JoyJoy. Crossfire launched towards the end of one sales report day (2:30PM CST), so the first day is only a fraction of one day. If we compare numbers of JoyJoy and Crossfire, it’s a bit easier to see what has happened:
We can see again that shortly after Crossfire launched, JoyJoy experienced a small surge in downloads and sales. Things have now evened out somewhat, with Crossfire on one main list (Top Rated #17 in the US) and JoyJoy on two. Aside from Canada, JoyJoy is generally rated a little higher than Crossfire (the UK is the only significant territory where neither is in the Top 20).
Comparing the launch windows:
The first twelve days for both games show a sharp decline before leveling out a little above 100 downloads per day. Crossfire had more initial downloads, but fewer daily sales due to a price of $3 instead of $1. Crossfire’s user rating has steadied out around #17 in the US (sometimes going to #16 briefly) so far, so it will likely have fewer long-term downloads. I’m slightly inclined to believe that Crossfire’s higher price has had a slightly negative effect on it’s user rating compared to JoyJoy, but it’s impossible to know that for sure. The other likely explanation is the lack of online leaderboards being more noticeable in Crossfire (due to the nature of the game).
Despite the outlook of JoyJoy’s downloads looking slightly better, it still appears that Crossfire will surpass JoyJoy in total revenue in a couple months. Here’s a comparison of the totals so far:
JoyJoy (5/16 – 7/18)
Trials: 11,929
Purchases: 3,595
Conversion Ratio: 30.14 %
Gross Revenue: $3,595
Est. Actual Revenue: $2,445*
Crossfire (7/7-7/18)
Trials: 6,251
Purchases: 767
Conversion Ratio: 12.27 %
Gross Revenue: $2,301
Est. Actual Revenue: $1,565*
*Note: XBLIG Developers get 70% of the revenue from MS, though it comes out to around 68% due to how Microsoft Points are processed.
Given the data so far and data from previous games on XBLIG, the conversion ratio for Crossfire will continue to climb, probably approaching 20% by the end of this year, while JoyJoy’s conversion ratio is unlikely to break 35% by then. Assuming both continue to get downloads relative to their chart placement, and the chart placement doesn’t change too much, JoyJoy will have more downloads and sales than Crossfire, but Crossfire will make more money. But any number of variables could change that, the most worrying being if Crossfire gets pushed off the Top Rated charts in the US.
What Does It All Mean
It’s difficult to make definitive statements about what will or won’t sell on XBLIG. Crossfire has definitely gotten better early buzz and online presence than JoyJoy did, but the amount of downloads wasn’t as significantly higher as I expected based on that, and long-term JoyJoy will likely have more downloads despite a better start for Crossfire.
Even though the data isn’t conclusive, it does appear that Crossfire had a small positive effect on JoyJoy, and it’s possible they’ll continue to help each other. I’m less certain the naming convention is helping (“radiangames Crossfire” instead of “Crossfire”), and in fact it could be hurting the games (heard about issues with people finding both games). If I had it to do over again, I’d likely drop the “radiangames” portion since the box art conveys the connection just as well and in a much more graceful way. I’ll probably continue to use the convention for XBLIG since it’s already out there and it’s possible it’ll have a positive long-term effect, but for other platforms ”radiangames” will not be in the name.
Moving on to things that are more certain: It’s been said before by other developers, but the most important factor to downloads and sales on XBLIG is visibility on the Xbox 360 Games Marketplace. There are other factors, with box art being the next most important because it’s the first thing most people will see about your game, but the easier it is to find your game, the more people will download it, and the more sales you’ll get.
Unfortunately, XBLIG developers have little control over visibility.
Getting onto the Top Rated charts is difficult and continues to become more difficult as more games are released. Whereas a 4.25 out of 5 user rating was a guaranteed spot in the Top 15 in the US just a few months ago, it’s no longer a guaranteed spot in the Top 20. And since I’m discussing ratings, I wanted to show one more chart:
I’ve cut off any ranking above 30 to get a better sense of the actual trends. The data mostly shows that the rating (stars out of 5) generally goes up, while the ranking (within all Indie Games), which is shown above, goes down over time, with the first ratings usually being especially harsh.
It’s important to note that JoyJoy had a rating of 3.5 out of 5 after 17 ratings, and first reached a 4.25 (which it still has today) after 128 ratings, whereas Crossfire had a rating of 4.0 out of 5 after 32 ratings, and a 4.25 by the time it had 40 ratings. Why Crossfire’s ranking flattened out so much quicker than JoyJoy’s is something of a mystery, though one theory is that JoyJoy experienced some twin-stick shooter backlash initially, and another is that JoyJoy has a deeper set of player-friendly options that have taken longer to discover. The continued downward trend for JoyJoy also happened to correspond somewhat to being chosen for the IGN Top Picks list.
Returning to the other charts, the Top Download chart is difficult to stay on for long periods of time without being highly-ranked on other charts or featuring Avatars. Avatar games are featured elsewhere on the dashboard and have an advantage over other Indie Games, and games on the Top Download charts are the most visible, leading to a positive feedback loop for those who get into the top slots (particularly the first 5). Occasionally other types of games are featured outside of the Indie Games channel (such as during the 30 Days of Undead promotion), but relying on such things is not recommended.
What’s Next?
If someone were to ask me whether I’d recommend they use the same strategy of creating lots of small, high-quality games for XBLIG, I’d have to say no given the data I have so far.
At the same time, I’ll continue doing just that, at least for a couple more games. I have the advantage of more experience than a new developer and having 2 highly-rated games on the service (and the name recognition that goes with it), and stopping now without seeing if the whole “radiangames” branding concept works or not seems like a wasted opportunity.
Also, XBLIG is still the only way to get make console games that doesn’t require any concept approval, which is important since most of the games I want to make work better on a console, but won’t all necessarily be appealing to those approving the ideas.
Inferno
Crossfire
JoyJoy