Back when the manufacturing of pirated games literally meant the production of carts with game code on them (or, at least, carts the dodgy guy behind the stall assured you had game code on them), dealing with the sale of illegal copies of titles was less of an issue. Though there are always exceptions to every rule, good games generally sold well, the chaff was pushed to the side, and pirated copies were a very very small thorn in gaming's side.
Now, with many games being distributed digitally, piracy is a much bigger issue, and one that seems to be gaining an ever greater presence on the iPhone. Following claims from developers that piracy rates can reach as high as 90 per cent, PR outfit Triple Point-- responsible for the promotion of the rather excellent Orbital-- has made public the problems it's having getting gamers to download games. Well, legally, anyway.
“The reviews are unanimous. Orbital is one of the best games on the iPhone,” Triple Point's blog declares. “This game must have sold like a million units right? The developers must be on a beach somewhere buying Ferraris on eBay and having Scottish castles airlifted to Brazilian mountaintops, right? Not quite.”
The blog continues, “Orbital’s sales figures are somewhat more modest than the reviews would suggest. As of this writing the game has still sold far less than 100,000 units. That’s not even a gold record.”
According to Triple Point, piracy is the main reason behind the game's commercial "failure", the company going as far as to warn others considering moving into iPhone development of the format's pitfalls.
“In its first week on the iTunes App Store, the game saw a piracy rate of 80 per cent,” the entry continues. “Today, the piracy rate is down to 24 per cent because they attached cannons to it. Even so, all those pirates grab the dollar candy, stuff their pockets, and don’t pay. Whether or not that really represents lost revenue depends on if you believe the pirates would have paid in a checkout system with better security guards. 5.8 hours of entertainment is worth two bucks whoever you are, guaranteed.
“So before you take out that second mortgage, sell your car, and bet it all on iPhone development, keep in mind that even the best apps are no guarantee of commercial success. App Store success isn’t so much about catching lightning in a bottle as it is about when your lightning strikes and what other bolts are coming down at the same time.”
Amongst all this talk of rising iPhone sales and an influx of apps and customers alike to the App Store, it's somewhat sobering to hear about the problems such games are having, especially when the games in question are rather good.
ORBITAL
6 Comments
It is very stupid that many people pirate an app. They just don't understand that developers won't take the risk of developing a big game anymore...
When everyone else is making money in the top 50 and you can't break into it cause your app isn't good enough or your business strategy sucks, ie not enough advertising purchased to push the app into the top 50. Well just blame jail broken iphone users who make up a very small percentage of users, i'd say 1/15-1/20 iphone's would be jail broken is my guess. I run a IT company and I don't want to bother with the nightmare of a jailbroken iphone and updates, back ups, itunes not syncing issues or worse potential bricking my iphone. Also at my IT company with 15 staff we only have 1 jail broken iphone and thats our iphone app developer. I mean Itunes is a nightmare as it is, adding in a jailbreak sounds like more trouble than its worth. Not to mention most are kids just jailbreaking them so they can steal some games on torrentz. They would not of purchased anyways.
This is actually the first time I even heard of Orbital. I agree, they need to do more advertising...go on iphone blogs, twitter, and facebook and they should have advertised like crazy before the game came out and show development status and pics and videos and advertise on web sites...or maybe they have, but I just didn't catch it for some reason?
"...the nightmare of a jailbroken iphone and updates, back ups, itunes not syncing issues or worse potential bricking my iphone...I mean Itunes is a nightmare as it is, adding in a jailbreak sounds like more trouble than its worth."
Actually having a jailbroken iPhone isn't a nightmare at all. Bricking the iPhone was really only a problem with the 1st generation iPhone & iPod Touch...2gen and up can easily be unbricked without a problem, using iTunes with a jailbroken iPhone is real easy to do...just drag and drop IPAs and sync and that's it. The reason there is a lot of jailbroken iPhones is because it's way to easy and you don't have to worry about bricking anymore. I have a jailbroken iPhone, but I don't pirate and I can't stand people steeling a .99 cent game, it's ridiculous.
I hate piracy on the iPhone, the games are cheap enough that there's no justification for pirating BUT I also HATE PR firms/developer who makes such claims for publicity. Each purchase can equal five people using the app since Apple allow five devices to be tied to one iTunes account. And families with multiple iPhones/iTouch are aplenty. So the piracy rate is probably a little lower than stated.
A few days ago, I read in another site about Orbital developers whining about low sales. I think they are just PR tactics to get free publicity. I almost bought their app but now I probably won't... I think they are making more than they make it look. Not every developer will strike it rich like the maker of iShoot does. But there's still money to be made.
As for increasing sales, there are way other than these negative whining PR stunts. Advertisement or positive word-of-mouth can be effective. Many developers trying the word-of-mouth way by giving their app free for a day or two, and if it's really good, and long-lasting, word-of-mouth would generate the sale from others..,
I don't think it is piracy. I think it is just not that great of a game, in spite of the reviews. Sour Grapes, me thinks!
Oh, it's a good game, believe me. Give the free version a go. Very addictive.
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