Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery sales statistics | Hacker News Reader

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery sales statistics

capybaragames.com

95 pointswhiskers39 comments

The big distorting effect here was that it was available for a long time on iOS before other platforms -- if you wanted the game, initially you had no choice other than iOS. And despite it being significantly more enjoyable on a touch screen, it was ported to Android last out of all the platforms supported.

Anyone know of a major game that had simultaneous releases on both Android and iOS at the same price?

e: Oh, another factor: it was available through the Humble Bundle on Android before it was in the Play store.

I guess I should also mention that it's a pretty fun game. :)

That plus the fact that Android tablets aren't really used and the game is much better on a tablet than a phone.

Well no, that's exactly what you want to find out from data like this. :)

(Well, what I was curious about, anyway.)

So you are saying that an Android user who wanted to play the game would just buy an iOS device? And that's why sells on Android were lower?

I was saying several things: people who have both iOS and PCs would have pushed to buy it on iOS, and people who have both PCs and Androids would have been pushed to buy it on PC.

And of course, the total revenue on iOS has had longer to accumulate.

If you guys are interested in more data, here's the sales stats for our game Dustforce: http://hitboxteam.com/dustforce-sales-figures

It's a non-mobile game, and has also been on the Humble Bundle. The article has a lot of details like dollar amounts and sales over time.

Also, your game didn't spam people constantly to tweet their progress or have the high amount of pretentiousness. Though, I'm sad you never implemented the level boss battles into the game.

#sworcery was pretentious? It seemed to me to be a game that took itself very un-seriously in some ways. I can't remember them, but I do recall laughing hard at some of the things that happened even in the first few hours of play.

I think jmomo is referring to the way the cigar-smoking businessman introduces the game as a "psychosocial audiovisual experiment" or something with pretentious wording like that. I personally wasn't bothered by that because I didn't get the idea that the developers were making the claim seriously.

> tweet their progress or have the high amount of pretentiousness

That kept the game interesting. The tweets were funny. No need to be mean about it.

I don't care how funny the tweets were. I don't want to tweet about it and I definitely don't want to be spammed about it.

Yeah, we just didn't have enough time to add in the boss battles :(

I stumbled across the Dustforce soundtrack randomly about a month ago and it's been the most played thing on my Spotify since!

I've had a long running dream to produce a game and your soundtrack inspires me to think about it more...

Thanks! Glad you like my music.

Honestly I can think of way more interesting ways to visualize the data than through pie charts. Perhaps they fear showing too much data, but it actually seems quite poorly done with so much interesting data.

I'd be really interested to learn what sort of trajectory the humble bundle had and to what degree each event had a short or long-term impact. I'd be interested to compare profit to the number of units over time.

As much as it might put a dampener on the whole "look how many sales we made" thing, I'd be curious to see any piracy statistics if they had any.

With the amount of money this small studio made, piracy was most likely a non-issue, especially considering they made the game free at one point.

I am amazed that someone somewhere is still using cassette tape. Literally the worst format for music ever.

And I speak as someone who enjoys using old junk.

It's hip with the kids as a bizarre nostalgia item. Can't understand it myself. At shows, you'll often see bands selling cassette tapes with download codes, sometimes as their sole physical media option. It's become way more common in the last five or six years outside of the punk scene. As technologists, it's useful for us to remember that people don't always choose the most technically sound solution.

I wonder if the other games on Humble Bundle 5 have similar sales stats between customers paying full price on iOS and the sale price on Google Play.

That's a great point.

Since you can't get iOS games in the humble bundles, that demographic of buyer isn't represented...

I came looking for a Linux/Windows/OSX breakdown. I was disappointed.

Desktop sales were mostly through Steam and the HumbleBundle, which both include all platforms.

The bundle does track total money spent per platform (you can specify which you want your purchase to count towards): http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281...

I'm really surprised that only 1% of sales is from the Mac App store. A good wake up call for me, certainly. Now I want to see a game that is on iOS and XBox live, and the differences in revenue.

Pretty interesting statistics. The one that caught my eye was that Mac App Store accounted for 1% of revenue. That seems low, but damning enough to discourage Mac game development in general? SBSS was out on iOS for a good while (it seemed) before the Mac port...it had a huge push of publicity and rave reviews, so I would suspect that everyone who was conceivably interested in the game got it for iOS. And the universe of people who have a Mac but not either an iPhone, iPod, or iPad, must be pretty small.

The Android numbers don't seem that different compared to other lopsided iOS vs Android sales statistics.

My guess is that Mac users got it through Steam, not the Mac store.

Actually, most Mac users likely got it through the various Humble Bundles which all included a Mac version. I picked it up through HIB V even though I had the iOS version because it included several other fantastic games that I did not have.

This. I much prefer purchasing through Steam for games.

That being said, I wouldn't purchase a game on bought on iOS over a year ago just to play on my Mac.

I was curious about the super lopsided iOS and Android numbers, as we were discussing these stats earlier in the office, and it seems like Android wouldn't be worth investing in based on these stats alone.

However, the iOS version was released over two years ago (March 24, 2011 on iPad and April 27, 2011 on iPhone) while the Android version was released in November 2012.

I was wondering if these numbers are standard, or is availability the main issue here? Or something else that I haven't thought of?

The numbers here have some weird factors (significant lag in release date, available on PC before Android, Humble Bundle sales.) But yes, it's generally accepted that iOS games are more profitable.

However, they still made a significant amount of revenue from non-iOS sources. (It was about half and half.) Whether it's worth investing in an Android version probably depends on how just how much effort it would be. Here they got about 1/5 as much revenue from Android as they did iOS, but I'd bet it took less than 20% of their initial budget to do the port. (Especially given that they had already ported it to Windows, OSX, and Linux.)

> The Android numbers don't seem that different compared to other lopsided iOS vs Android sales statistics.

Interesting how 77% of Android purchases were made when the app went on sale, versus 14% for iOS. Other articles mention how Android users favor ad-supported free apps above the ad-free $0.99 model.

Personally, the last thing I want to see when playing a game is a disruptive banner ad flashing at the top of screen. Not just games - it's ugly and tacky in just about any app.

It was available via the Humble Bundle sale before it was released in the play store, so people who are "into" android gaming probably grabbed it then.

> That seems low, but damning enough to discourage Mac game development in general?

I'd much rather buy OS X games through Steam than the MAS. I'm sure there are a lot of other people who feel the same way.

Ditto. Steam tends to have the same price or lower, updates more frequently, and it's cross platform. I see no reason to use the MAS if there's any choice at all.

I'm glad to see the high usage of Bandcamp.

Too bad that the game is hideously boring ...

not so much, it is indeed a strange game but i liked it, mostly for its style, one of the better game of the humble bundles :)

I didn't finish it. I lost interest ...

Why does my Mac copy keep trying to update itself for Retina?

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