Eikon: half would be nice. Typically portals offer around 35% then the publisher takes a cut etc.
222 copies may not seem "worth" it, but to be honest just ONE sale was worth it to achieve a dream: making a commercial game and selling it! I'm not sure if it would be worth putting on shelves all over the US for $9.99, does anyone have any sales figures to back this up? I'm sure that 50% of boxed titles is NOT the going rate (retailers probably want at least 50%, publisher wants >50%, leaves developer with around 10-20%). I figure that most games probably make nothing.
re: "little time and effort put into it" well, it was 170 hours to convert Xmas Bonus, plus the artist hours, must be >100, and musician hours (quite a lot), and the original time making the engine which would be 300 hours plus. So maybe 600+ hours in total? (4 solid months) For that much effort, I really did want to sell it otherwise I could have stopped at 200 hours and just had a little demo game.
As others have pointed out, I'm not charging $19.99, the major portals are. It's $14.95 on Cloverleaf, and was a 50% off around Christmas plus Big Fish Games let people buy games as part of mega packs for < $9.99. Besides I think it holds it head up well against quite a lot of other portal games and $19.99 is the going rate. If Real Arcade took it, gamepass members could have got it for $19.99, but they didn't b*stards.
"more advanced and polished", well I'd argue with advanced. I've played pretty much all the match-3s out there and plenty aren't as advanced as mine, but none are so much more "advanced" that they stand out from the crowd. Plus some of the more advanced ones are missing other vital features. (This is assuming that by "advanced" you mean with more features/gameplay elements etc.) As for polished, well that's in the eye of the beholder, I haven't used fancy 3D effects etc because the game is supposed to have a retro-style pixel art look. Maybe people just see this as "unpolished", shame. Sure there was more bit's n bobs that could have been done, but they wouldn't have made much different to the overall feel unless I totally overhalled the graphics and theme (which I'm doing with my next game).
[edit: Kuron, have you signed up to my newsletter? It will contain special offers at some point).
222 copies may not seem "worth" it, but to be honest just ONE sale was worth it to achieve a dream: making a commercial game and selling it! I'm not sure if it would be worth putting on shelves all over the US for $9.99, does anyone have any sales figures to back this up? I'm sure that 50% of boxed titles is NOT the going rate (retailers probably want at least 50%, publisher wants >50%, leaves developer with around 10-20%). I figure that most games probably make nothing.
re: "little time and effort put into it" well, it was 170 hours to convert Xmas Bonus, plus the artist hours, must be >100, and musician hours (quite a lot), and the original time making the engine which would be 300 hours plus. So maybe 600+ hours in total? (4 solid months) For that much effort, I really did want to sell it otherwise I could have stopped at 200 hours and just had a little demo game.
As others have pointed out, I'm not charging $19.99, the major portals are. It's $14.95 on Cloverleaf, and was a 50% off around Christmas plus Big Fish Games let people buy games as part of mega packs for < $9.99. Besides I think it holds it head up well against quite a lot of other portal games and $19.99 is the going rate. If Real Arcade took it, gamepass members could have got it for $19.99, but they didn't b*stards.
"more advanced and polished", well I'd argue with advanced. I've played pretty much all the match-3s out there and plenty aren't as advanced as mine, but none are so much more "advanced" that they stand out from the crowd. Plus some of the more advanced ones are missing other vital features. (This is assuming that by "advanced" you mean with more features/gameplay elements etc.) As for polished, well that's in the eye of the beholder, I haven't used fancy 3D effects etc because the game is supposed to have a retro-style pixel art look. Maybe people just see this as "unpolished", shame. Sure there was more bit's n bobs that could have been done, but they wouldn't have made much different to the overall feel unless I totally overhalled the graphics and theme (which I'm doing with my next game).
[edit: Kuron, have you signed up to my newsletter? It will contain special offers at some point).