"We're all the rage"
Plants vs. Zombies shambles to the top of the App Store.
Back when I started playing Plants vs. Zombies, I remember one of my first thoughts being, “Wow, this is an incredible game!” but hot on the heels of that revelation was “Wow, I should be playing this on the iPhone!” Well, even though it took a little over 9 months to figure out, creator Pop Cap Games finally caught on and, on Feb 15th 2010, Plants vs. Zombies was released on Apple’s App Store. Now, I was already expecting a fairly positive response from the iPhone gaming community but nothing could have prepared me or Pop Cap Games for what we are now seeing.
Look at that. The layout is even in the SHAPE of mobile screen.
Plants vs. Zombies is now the fastest and best selling game on Apple’s App Store. Within the first 24 hours, it was already at the top of the store’s “Top Selling” and, at $2.99 a pop (pun intended), “Top Grossing” lists and somehow managed to hold those spots until just two days ago. Considering the cut-throat marketplace that is the Apple App Store, this is no small feat but, with over 300,000 units sold in just 9 days, no one is surprised.
Current Rank in "Top Grossing" list as of today, Feb 2nd. Still kicking ass.
So what does this mean for the future of Pop Cap Games development? Nothing is, of course, for certain but they’d be fools not to shift a significant portion of their resources into iPhone App development. It’s true their full fledged desktop version of PvZ (retail: $9.99) sold for more than three times the iPhone apps price but let’s look at the numbers for a moment. Now, we don’t have exact sales numbers for PC games, and don’t tell me to use NPD numbers because we all know they don’t tally digital distributions, but we can do some shady math with the App Store. We are now going to assume PvZ on the App store takes a nose dive just for the sake of argument. Let’s say, the next 10 days mark a serious drop in sales. We’ll say they get only half the buys they got in the first 9 days. Then, lets assume it continues its belly flop and, in the next 10 days, only pushes half that number of copies. This brings us to 29 days out from release, so around a month of sales, all while we assumed things would take a seriously marked decline. If you were playing along at home, you already know the tally went like this:
300,000
150,000
75,000
————
525,000 copies sold
Over half a million units sold is the result of estimations NOT in Pop Caps favor. At $2.99, that’s a dollar amount just over 1.5 million! I’d expect these are figures Pop Cap has run through themselves and clearly they can’t be ignored. If, from this day forward, they’re not planning to release EVERY game they create(d) for the iPhone as well for PC and other platforms, they are fools of the highest caliber.
- Squid out
On those downloads Pop Cap made no more than $1.05 million. Apple takes a 30% cut of every sale. If it’s sold in a location where there is a sales/VAT tax that also comes out of your side. The real winner here is Apple who walked away with $450,000 for doing nothing more than hosting the download.
Oh, there can be many a winner in this situation. Yes, the cut goes to Apple but the 1.5 mill was not stated as Pop Cap profit. It’s just overall profit. Pop Cap knew the cut Apple would take when they submitted. This is still a huge win on their part.
Furthermore, everyone takes cuts, even those we love. Devs are going to lose money where every they place their IP. Here’s an example that will make you cry inside.
Randy Pitchford, one of the lead devs for Gearbox was quoted as saying in an interview with Maximum PC
“… I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.”
He continues later on to state,
“I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I’m just saying, Steam isn’t the answer. Steam helps us as customers, but it’s also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that’s not totally fair. Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service its providing. It’s exploiting a lot of small guys. For us big guys, we’re going to sell the units and it will be fine.”
(Here is the link to the article. My quotes were from page 3)
Ouch…
My point is, everyone gets a piece of the pie. There are few forms of distribution that avoid that. The best bet is to make sure you’re pie is the biggest and the best. I think thats exactly what Pop Cap did. I tip my hat to them and their hearty pie.
Pitchford is just pissed that someone is takign profits from him. Honestly, the guy is a bit of a douche. Gearbox was basically created to develope Half Life 1 expansions. Valve basically created his company. If you don’t want Valve to get a piece of your profit, then don’t sell your product through Steam. I just solved your problem, Randy!
Valve created a service that does its job better than anything anyone else has created thus far. It’s not perfect by a long shot, but it’s BETTER than everyone else. If the customer base was unhappy with the arrangement with Steam, they wouldn’t use it. If the Developers and Publishers were truly unhappy with the arrangement, they wouldn’t sell through Steam, which would in turn reduce Steam’s influence in the industry.
Honestly, Pitchford is just wrong. Steam has helped alot of indie developers get products published and sold that they wouldn’t have been able to get out into the market through a retail arrangement. Perhaps they could have sold directly through their own websites, but they wouldn’t have the exposure that Steam provides. Pitchford is just plain wrong, and you’d think he’d be a bit more gracious to the people who gave him a career.
Great point, Antilles. Profit sharing is not an evil. Valve did many a wonderful thing to get in the position it’s at. Pitchford should think of that before he speaks. It’s crazy how money is so often tied to amnesia.
Bottom line, as Ant said, devs would not get their products to as widely ranged an audience had they not placed it on a platform like the App Store or Steam.
A great example is Mount & Blade. Great game. The developers, a married couple who created the game in their off hours, were selling it on their home grown website for years. I only started playing because I heard about it from a friend of a friend. They had decent sales and were considered a great success when talking about indie developers who handled EVERYTHING themselves.
Still, the game didn’t get REALLY popular until just last year when they developers opted to put the game up on Steam. Now its not uncommon for me to to be chatting up a PUG team in Left 4 Dead 2 and someone to say something to the effect of “Have you ever played that game Mount & Blade? Man, it’s awesome!”
Despite what you may think of Apple’s app review policies, to the majority of devs, Steam and the App Store are a godsend.