I''ve noticed a great drop in sales the last weeks - and if I say great, I mean great. I take it with a grain of salt mostly, but my restless part is going *PANIC*. I emailed a different GameDev member and he said similiar problems, although I have seem to be hit the worst yet. Could someone - preferably from US - check out my site www.nbsd.de and see if something doesn''t load or something? Maybe its a DNS or general internet problem. Anyone else having noticed a significant drop in sales lately?

http://www.nbsd.de - Smugglers 2, TV Manager...

http://www.downloadpal.com - Download directory with own reviews

I download all 3 demos and the installers started just fine. None of them compained of being corrupt (although I didn''t go through with the install, but I think usually the installers check the data first. This was over a comcast cable modem.

What kind of result are you getting? Are just your sales decreasing, or are you demo downloads and/or site traffic decreasing at a similar rate? If everything but the actual sales has remained constant, then I would ask if you made any updates in that time? Perhaps you introduced a bug that is causing people to give up on your games.

How about your advertising? Have you changed it (changed any of the keywords or anything)? Are you seeing a difference in traffic from any particular source (assuming you have things set up so you can see where each person was referred from)?

Check with the ASP members to see if they have had any similar results. I thought I recalled someone mentioning a decrease in June but an increase in July, but thats just what I recall (and I dont remember if they sold games or apps).

Has anyone else introduced any similar games in that time period that might have stolen customers?

Can you compare traffic between nbsd and download pal? Any chance that customers are coming into nbsd and going out to downloadpal through the banner at the bottom of your home page?



Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Taking Puzzle Games to A Whole New Dimension

quote: Original post by LordKronos
I download all 3 demos and the installers started just fine. None of them compained of being corrupt (although I didn''t go through with the install, but I think usually the installers check the data first. This was over a comcast cable modem.

Wow thank you for your time.

quote:
What kind of result are you getting? Are just your sales decreasing, or are you demo downloads and/or site traffic decreasing at a similar rate? If everything but the actual sales has remained constant, then I would ask if you made any updates in that time? Perhaps you introduced a bug that is causing people to give up on your games.

Sales decreased more than download rates. Download rate decreased by 50%, but sales by 90%.

quote:
How about your advertising? Have you changed it (changed any of the keywords or anything)? Are you seeing a difference in traffic from any particular source (assuming you have things set up so you can see where each person was referred from)?

Nope.

quote:
Check with the ASP members to see if they have had any similar results. I thought I recalled someone mentioning a decrease in June but an increase in July, but thats just what I recall (and I dont remember if they sold games or apps).

Yep, although it doesn''t really help me to know if other experience it as well.

quote:
Has anyone else introduced any similar games in that time period that might have stolen customers?

Nope.

quote:
Can you compare traffic between nbsd and download pal? Any chance that customers are coming into nbsd and going out to downloadpal through the banner at the bottom of your home page?

This "could" be part of the problem, but I have the banner already since 4 weeks or so.

Basically I didn''t changed anything the last weeks.

I first thought that someone might finally cracked or whatever my program, but that would only explain a smaller amount of the decrease.

David? Steve? Any drop in sales?

[edited by - Jester101 on August 4, 2002 4:17:57 PM]

Our sales are actually at an all-time high. June was our best month ever by about 70%, and then July beat it by another 70%. August sales are off to a strong start as well. But we just released four new games since June 20, so that''s going to mask any downward trends.

However, I have been seeing unusually frequent reports in the ASP that certain members'' sales have dropped like a rock, sometimes very suddenly, like a decrease of as much as 80-90% but with no easily traceable cause. Recently it seems that every week someone is noting a massive and unexplainable drop in sales.

On the other hand, there are others I know who are seeing massive sales increases.

The economy is definitely weak right now, and certain types of software commonly see sluggish summer sales normally. I think these sudden sales drops are likely caused by a combination of factors coming together. I don''t have enough hard data on how others'' sales are doing, but this is my theory:

Consumers are uncertain about the future, and so they''re being more cautious about making impulse purchases. Many of them still want/need to buy software, but they want to get the best possible bang per buck. As a result, they may be more likely to check out a larger number of products in a given category. For instance, if they''re looking for a particular type of utility, instead of just downloading one, finding it fits their needs, and buying it, they''ll be a bit more value-conscious and download several such programs and pick the best one to buy. For games, they may look for single games that provide great value instead of impulse buying several games. I.e. people are shopping around more to look for the best deal.

If the above is true, then what could be happening is that the weaker products will see a large drop in sales, but the best products in each category may tend to see an increase. During a weak economy, the strong can still thrive, but the weaker competitors will tend to suffer the most.

One clue I see in our own sales that gives me this impression is that sales of our older $9.95 games have dropped this summer... by about 50% on average. But sales of our higher quality games have increased on average.

This is just my theory, but it seems to explain all the data I''m seeing. Most of the people I know who are seeing the massive sales drops are not those whose products are #1 or #2 in their fields. Mainly they seem to have "me-too" products in a crowded field. The developers I know with products that are the best in their fields seem to be more commonly reporting sales increases.

This is why putting so much time into creating compelling registration incentives is essential. You don''t just have to convince the player to buy -- you have to convince the player to buy your game instead of someone else''s. If your incentives are just 10% better than your competition''s, you may actually get double or triple the sales, not just 10% more.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

Blame unemployment, corporate fraud, war, terrorism, stock market lows,
global warming, etc... But this seems like it happens every year.

Yes June and July were my strongest months as well, but suddenly a big bang in August. Anyway this night the sales have increased to 50%-60% of whats normal. I hope it normalizes now again. Never encountered something like that anyway. I mean I would understand a drop of sales due to whatever reason, but I dropped from about 10 sales a day to 0 for three days. And its not like I am selling shareware for a month, but having great sales for two years now without any such "unbalances". On the other hand if you have 10 or 20 products that''s something else than 2.

just to add to the weird X files mysrey, My sales just picked back up again ( as of last night)
weird......

http://www.positech.co.uk

The Journal usually slumps in summer. But it makes sense for the type of software it is. It''s journaling software, so the best months are January, and the months around January (think New Years'' Resolutions). June and July tend to suck for The Journal, but back-to-school in August tends to begin an upward trend that carries until the end of the year and then peaking at January again.

With Artifact, though, I''ve just about given up predicting sales patterns. The past 2 years have been very inconsistent (compared with past games and even with Artifact''s own past performance). Artifact tends to be busiest in summer, but that doesn''t always lead to more sales (though it used to, go figure). Artifact just does what it does these days, and so long as it doesn''t *lose* money I avoid making predictions and try not to complain...

DavidRM
Samu Games

Jester101:

Just a possible suggestion for your drop in sales:

I just had a look at your DownloadPal site and I noticed you are listing a AAA game in a prominent position. I don''t think its a good idea to list AAA games like Morrowind on the same site as indie style games as indie games can''t compete on any level with AAA games. People could be deciding to save for a month or so and get something like Morrowind instead of your Smugglers game.