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previous parts
Mobile Income Report #2 - July 2014
Mobile Income Report #1 - June 2014
Apps page - Portfolio (what are my assets?)
If you do not want to miss any of my Income Reports you can follow me on Twitter. Just click the button above.
Under Apps page
you can see my portfolio. It is list of the games that are then
reported in Income Reports. The portfolio is regularly updated with new
information (releases for new platforms, new updates, ...)
What I did in August
- we released free version of Deadly Abyss 2 at Amazon. The main reason was to touch $6 CPM for newly published apps that includes Amazon interstitial ads,
- I finished some contracted work on game named "McDiary From tomorrow...". The client came with game that has mobile part and web part. I was responsible for mobile part, which is simple game in which you are catching falling diamonds into cart. There are 7 colors of them (like in the rainbow). You have to catch only one of each color and you also have to avoid falling stalactites. If you are successful, you can send your resolution to do something to web page. If you connect to web you can read resolutions of other people. The game uses box2D for physics and is available for Android and iOS. As there are menus and registration forms and so on, I had to learn it for Android as well as for iOS. It finally kicked me to dive deeper into both systems. Here are at least some screenshots. The graphics was done by Tomáš Kopecký (flyboj) from www.littlecolor.com - see his work for example here.
- in second half of the August we were preparing for "Free App of the Day" event at Amazon. Yes! We were chosen with our game Shards. And on 3rd September our game was featured. So, next time, in September report, I will refer in big detail on how was it all about.
- there was really serious bug in iOS version of Shards. All iOS 6 devices were crashing. It was reported by one guy from Canada. Thankfully he is also developer, so he understands that coding is complex area and was very helpful. The bug came from fact that with the game I was targeting iOS 6 and above. But some linked libraries were targeting iOS 7 and higher. I previously compiled box2D as static library with iOS 7 target (not intentionally, just did not mentioned). Box2D is not using any iOS specific features so why it crashed? There is some optimization in compiler for iOS 7 that replaces consequent calls to sin and cos with only one call to function that is not present in older versions. So all iOS 6 devices crashed because of calling non-existing function. If you see in crash report this, you have the same problem:
Dyld Error Message: Symbol not found: ___sincosf_stret Referenced from: /var/mobile/Applications/XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX/Shards.app/Shards Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib Dyld Version: 212.3.2
Report
Here are figures for paid apps for August:
The most profitable was Shards again. It increased its share from 80% in July to 86% in August. The game has good user reviews and during August we were in contact with Amazon team responsible for Free App of the Day event. Shards was featured within this event on 3rd September and next month I will report the financial impact of it. I am little bit sad seeing Fruit Dating is performing so bad. I like that game as it is original puzzle with nice graphics and music (and some really challenging puzzles). But it seems, that bet on proven concept (Shards - brickbreaker) is better than some original thoughts...
For the ads supported versions the August was bad month. As bad as July. There is only slight increase from $118,6 to $121,7. The income stayed on the same level. I can look at it from positive side: there was no further decrease :-)
Most of the earnings came from Chartboost again. This network has priority in our ads manager. Newly you can also see small amount for Deadly Abyss 2 Amazon ads. These are interstitials and Amazon guarantees $6 CPM for August and September (if you meet some conditions). We have only very low traffic there. But if the CPM remained at this level we would consider to prefer Amazon over Chartboost.
Finally, this month there is one more source of income for me. Despite income from apps, which is income for all our team (and only around 1/2 half is mine), this one is all mine.It is $1048 from contracted work on McDiary game.
So, income for August for SBC team = $39,7 + $121,7 = $161,4 (+1,3% compared to July Report)
+ $1048 for contracted work for me = $1209,4.
In August I reached my mid-term target ($750), but only thanks to contracted work. Excluding it I am past three months on $160 level. Contracted work seems to be way how to keep my freedom of independent developer, but of course at cost of time for my own projects. Anyway, thanks to it I was forced to study hard new iOS and Android topics, that were new to me.
Next?
Next report theme will be definitely featuring of Shards as "Free App of the Day" at Amazon (3rd September) - its financial impact and discussion of experts on role of Shards in today's world :-)I will also report my progress with Unity and our non-Unity games as well as share my experience with other related topics.
