Hi folks, I'm currently in the thick of pitching to large publishers to try and land a nice publishing deal, whilst at the same time, pitching to Apple for an App Store feature. Q: Assuming you were fortunate enough to get offered a feature from Apple and a publishing deal from a big name publisher, which one would you go for? Obviously the App Store Feature would have an amazing global reach for approx 1 x week, but a publishing deal would have the longevity and reach of their current portfolio. If you were lucky enough to choose, which one would tempt you more?
I'd choose the publsher deal. If the pub has a large reachability, a feature might follow in other countries later when not launched worldwide at the same time. I think Color Switch has proven that good marketing can get you to the top
Wow decisions, decisions. Either would be great. As todro said, and also downloads would be larger over a longer period time with a big publisher. But also it would be an awesome feeling cracking a feature on your own merits. Bottom line if it gets a feature, and its a great game it will do well. All the best with your decision.
A couple bits to consider (I realize the question may just be a hypothetical) 1) Apple won't guarantee you a feature (to my knowledge), you have to wait and see once your game is live. 2) Using a publisher could increase the chances of getting a feature depending on the extent of their relationship with Apple
I'm not experienced in this but from what I read here and at other sites Apple does NOT tell you if you get a feature in advance. At least not till a few days before Thursday. And then only to prepare your marketing so you can include the feature. This means that if you decide to go as a lone wolf it is playing lottery and as we all know, most are not lucky. Also, your game is not a casual game which from what I have seen week after week is not very common to be featured. I can imagine that if you get some great reviews from important game sites/magazines in advance, then you have a good chance to get a feature. But if you don't have the backup from them, I would go all the way with the biggest publisher you can get. I have also seen in the last weeks that a lot of featured games don't even get close to the top 100, but this might be a Christmas-New-Year thing. But at the other hand, Ketchapp has 4 titles in the top 50 without being featured once. This means that right now it's all about marketing. Cross promotion being the most important key element and after that everything related to social platforms (see example Color Switch). In a few weeks I will be in a very similar situation and to be honest, I did not stop thinking about it for a single day the last two month. I still want to keep going with my community based publisher idea but if it fails it means I have to search for another job. My first game must get me some income to survive with my family, it's as simple as that. And to make sure I get some, an already established publisher is the only way to go.
All great points. My gut was look for a publisher, but I got an email back from Apple asking for a video and screenshots etc. Its a pretty standard email I'm sure, but just got me thinking. Good point about not knowing if Apple will feature prior to release, this makes this so much more of a gamble. Thanks for the input folks.
Hi Phill, Please let us know how it worked out. Also if you can tell how the deal with the publishers works? They get credit for what? Just for publishing your game? Will appear as the game would be created by them or only published by them and you will own all other rights? For publishing it they will get a percentage from the sales eventually? How high this can be? Apple takes 30% as far as I know. If you can give some insights would be great. Best, John
Hi John @creativesoffice, I haven't signed a publishing deal with anyone yet, so I can only share what I have read/discovered from others who have been published. With a typical publishing deal, you can expect something between 20% - 40% for the dev. This varies greatly depending on which publisher and what history you have with them. Buildbox publishing offer a simple 50/50 split. You retain all intellectual property of your app. What a publisher brings to the table is a large active user base, advertising dollars and effective cross promotion between their app network. This results in more downloads and more profits, but of course comes at the cost of a large percentage of your app going in their pocket. So you have the option of going it alone and keeping 100% of your profits, or trying to get published and having a smaller percentage of a larger pie, your choice at the end of the day. Apples 30% is a given regardless of who you go with, that won't ever change, so the profit split is after Apples 30%, just the same as publishing on your own.
As a hint: 100% of $10 is still lesser than 50% of $100 ... Now I am not saying that you cannot make a great launch on your own and get lucky or do some awesome marketing efforts by yourself, however, it takes at least as much effort as to create the game if not greater to succeed. You can choose to use your time and effort on marketing, or you can concentrate on your next game -- your choice. Oh, and I have a not got a great experience using marketing companies, so based on this experience I would not recommend that.
I've just had a publisher get back to me asking to evaluate a build, which is great, but they've sent me their iPad and iPhone UDID. What am I to do with these? Should I just email back asking for their Testflight email (I did this in my original email), or would that come across as unprofessional? ** Think I may have just remembered what this is for. Is it for adding devices to provisioning profiles and sending to testers via https://www.diawi.com/ ? Anyone using this method for test distribution? Cheers.
Hi, @ Phill Mason Thanks for your insights. This is my first game, starting out and I may go with a publisher. Any chance to get a publisher to publish on ios only for example and on android to try alone? Or if you chose a publisher they force you to sign for both platform or more platforms? Re www.diawi.com no, i used tesflight while ago to test some apps I did for some people but is not available anymore. John
The UDID variant is used for internal tests with assigned devices, number of UDIDs is limited but unless you didn't woe with UDIDs, you shouldn't run into problems. Important: you need to use an ad-hoc or a team provisioning profile, not a normal developer/distribution profile. XCode Archive Organizer->Save for Ad Hoc deployment You can create the IPA package like you would for a wireless distribution but you can also send them the IPA and they can install it on the device via XCode Organizer.
Just uploaded and sent off my first app ipa for testing with a publisher, using the https://www.diawi.com/ website. All went without a hitch, thanks for the tips above @todro, very much appreciated.
Not yet @heathclose, I'm casting a wider net to try and get some response. I keep updating the app, so I've held off sending a video to Apple till all the new tweaks are done, but finished now, so a video will follow shortly.
@Phill Mason Even if you go with the Publishing deal, I would still pursue Apple to feature. It can only help.
