Comments on: This is why portals sell more than you do!

By: TC

TC — Wed, 11 May 2011 17:38:54 +0000

Maciek, didn’t Phantasmat do extremely well for you?

By: Pallav Nawani

Pallav Nawani — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:45:29 +0000

We have to realise that casual games market has been cornered by the portals. Majority of the regular game buyers are with BFG, rest with other portals.

The trick to make more money is to make MARKETABLE hardcore games!

Some of us have years of experience making casual games and our game quality has risen to the point where we can create high quality games. For those people it makes sense to leave the overpopulated small pond ( of casual games) and move to the bigger pond. Sure there is risk, but if want to make more than $2.3 per game (that’s developer’s share on average) then we need to make games that will sell for more.

By: Grey Alien Games » Blog Archive » Making your site different from Portals

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 16:58:24 +0000

[…] over at Anawiki games just made a blog post called: This is why portals sell more than you do. It includes a large list of USPs that the portals […]

By: Roman Budzowski

Roman Budzowski — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:06:17 +0000

Very good points Maciek!

Kenneth, I know that going niche is one way to do it, but what if you’re not interested in this way?

By: Maciek

Maciek — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:00:28 +0000

This sounds really pessimistic. Everything would be fine if the portals would have the muscle to sell more copies of your game and earn more for a particular developer, but they don’t and we’re seeing serious drops in revenue. Here are some things that we at Codeminion try to do to stay competitive:

* Exclusive soft-launches (when we launch games, we always offer them exclusively for some time before we go to portals. Unfortunately many players will rather wait for the game as they prefer to purchase games with their portal membership programs)
* Provide better support than portals (this should actually be pretty easy and straightforward. Portals can’t fix your game if it’s broken and they can’t react very quickly to your problem).
* Offer exclusive content for your games (we offer expansion packs for Saqqarah, wallpapers, game music downloads, etc.)
* Ask our players what they want to see in future games (like the “Help us design Brunhilda Sequel” contest)
* Run our own beta program, where players can get full version games before they are released.

But doing all of this is still not enough, so if anyone knows any more such things, please share them :)

By: Kenneth

Kenneth — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 13:59:43 +0000

Of the great ways to sell more from your site is to create a super addictive unique game that people can’t find in casual portal. (ie: Kudos, minecraft ). yeah:) I know it’s easier said than done :)