Comments on: Sales Statistics: Crystal Cave and Crystal Cave Gold

By: moi

moi — Wed, 31 May 2006 16:49:00 +0000

Wow that looks very profitable for a 2 month game. I’d call that a success.

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Mon, 29 May 2006 07:11:52 +0000

@mathgenius: “But the 160 or so hours spent developing could have netted $16,000 to $24,000 in contracting fees.”
Now that would be something I’d like to see. Getting $20K per month would be nice. Where could you get contracting fees that big? (for one month job)

By: mathgenius

mathgenius — Sun, 28 May 2006 21:38:28 +0000

Except that the game was somehow developed for $0.

Nowhere in the $900 is the cost of development mentioned. From what I have seen, paying programmers and artists is a big part of the cost of making games. The low cost includes marketing costs, plus a small cost paid to port the game to Mac. But the 160 or so hours spent developing could have netted $16,000 to $24,000 in contracting fees.

The economics are great if someone is paying your living expenses (e.g. dorm room with food included) but for anyone else thinking these numbers are great, you gotta take into account that these numbers have completely zeroed out the time spent on development. I suppose that’s ok if it’s time you would have otherwise spent watching South Park, but it doesn’t scale well.

AC0528

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 16:37:57 +0000

Great thanks for confirming that it’s net sales on portals. That means the number of sales would be around 600 minimum on the portals, good work!

By: Mark Bishop

Mark Bishop — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 13:21:58 +0000

Nice, thanks for sharing these sales statistics ^_^

By: Pavel Tovarys

Pavel Tovarys — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 12:32:42 +0000

Yes, it’s NET sales.

Different price: There are tax included in the gross revenue. F.e. EU countries have special taxes and the prices are 12.95 for USA, but 15.22 USD for United Kingdom, 19.27 for France, 21.35 for Finland etc.

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:08:03 +0000

@Jake: 100% confirmation got: it’s NET sales. I asked him to give more details… but now we wait to see whether he is allowed to say.

@Pavlos: It might be that the price of the game has changed, or discount or some other adjustment that has happened. But, I’ll ask.

Just a moment… ;)

By: Pavlos

Pavlos — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 11:01:40 +0000

Something is not right about the sale figures:

334 sales for “crystal cave” at $12.95 each should give $4325.3 gross profit (334 *12.95), and not the stated $4649.84. The other games have similar discrepancies.

Maybe I’m missing something, the differences are small anyway, but I would like to have a clarification on this. Maybe the difference is from affiliate sales?

By: Jake Birkett

Jake Birkett — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:43:43 +0000

Cool, might be nice to 100% confirm this (i.e. net or gross portal figure), and perhaps total qty of portals sales, if he’s allowed to say. Who added up the TOTAL, you or Pavel?

By: Juuso - Game Producer

Juuso - Game Producer — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:14:08 +0000

Pavel confirmed that these numbers are okay, so I’d say it’s NET. I can ask him again about that… and bring you the answer.