

How to sell your game online without using an app-store - gnoupi
http://positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/?p=884

======
arn
A couple of notable quotes:

1\. _I’ve sold tens of thousands of games direct online, since I started in
1998_

2\. _It took me maybe 5 years before I could live from my direct sales, and
was able to quit my job._

10's of thousands doesn't sound like much over 12 years, and it took him 5
years to go full time.

This reminds me of the story of Pangea software. An indie Mac shareware game
company. They launched with the iPhone App Store:
[http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/11/17/story1....](http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2008/11/17/story1.html)

 _Although his game development business [Pangea] launched in 1987, the
revenue generated in six months by just two of its iPhone games has matched
the retail revenue of all of Pangea’s preceding personal computer games
combined, he says._

In 6 months they made more than __21 years __of being an indie shareware
developer. That is the promise/possibility of a highly traffic'd app store.
And yes, results not typical, but I think the point still stands.

------
benologist
There are guys like Terry Cavanagh who've had some success by making limited
versions in Flash that market the real version.

The Flash industry can deliver an enormous quantity of eyeballs onto a game.
My own best has had almost 6 million people play it although I track games
much larger than that.

<http://www.kongregate.com/games/TerryCavanagh/vvvvvv-demo>

------
ryandvm
So is anyone taking this approach with iPhone or Android apps? And to what
degree of success?

It's starting to get under my skin that I lose 30% of my app's
(<http://goo.gl/USEr>) revenue for nothing more than a listing in the app
store and payment processing.

~~~
arn
You can't with iPhone since the App Store is the only official way to get onto
an iPhone.

I can't speak to android, but suggesting that the iOS App Store is "nothing
more than a listing and payment processing" is sort of like saying you'd
rather sell your widget directly from your basement rather through Wal-Mart so
you don't have to give up the retail markup to Wal-Mart.

