

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery sales statistics - whiskers
http://www.capybaragames.com/2013/07/a-sworcery-infographic

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shardling
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. :)

~~~
agent123
That plus the fact that Android tablets aren't really used and the game is
much better on a tablet than a phone.

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

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

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

~~~
jmomo
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.

~~~
gknoy
#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.

~~~
roryokane
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.

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ignostic
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.

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barbs
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.

~~~
unknownian
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.

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DanBC
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.

~~~
tokenrove
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.

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OWaz
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.

~~~
scott_karana
That's a great point.

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

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

~~~
shardling
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...](http://support.humblebundle.com/customer/portal/articles/281031-prior-
bundle-statisticsd)

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kvnn
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.

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danso
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.

~~~
rocky1138
My guess is that Mac users got it through Steam, not the Mac store.

~~~
tl
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.

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

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Yuioup
Too bad that the game is hideously boring ...

~~~
buster
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 :)

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

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

