Friday, September 28, 2012

How much does it cost to start selling your indie games?

Hello young developer! So you want to try your hand in the time honored tradition of making indie-games for dektops and mobiles, selling them to players and hopefully make a modest living?

No sweat! Microsoft, Apple & Google are here to help you! Just pay the following fees and you're good to go:
  • $99/year for mac app store.
  • $99/year for ios app store.
  • $99 (for a certificate) + $99/year for the windows store.
  • $25 for google play market (what a steal!)
For the low sum of  $421 (most of it recurring yearly) you too can make commercial indie games! Isn't that exciting?
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6 comments:

  1. Darren GreySeptember 28, 2012 at 2:04 PM

    Hey, and don't forget 30% of your hard-earned profits going to these publishers! Cause you exist to serve them, after all.

    ReplyDelete
  2. bluescrnSeptember 28, 2012 at 2:12 PM

    Meh, these are the small fees...

    Add £1-2k for a Mac, needed for most iOS development (or for just uploading the final binary if you're using something like Marmalade on a PC...)

    Photoshop is what, £600 or so (well worth it though, IMO). And you'll need a mortgage if you need a 3D modelling package better than Blender.

    Dev tools don't come cheap, either - if you want to use Visual Studio, or middleware such as Unity or Marmalade (and you won't want the 'basic' licenses with the ugly splash screens...)

    Then another few grand for enough devices to test your game on (I've got 7 iOS devices and 2 Android devices so far... haven't shipped an Android game yet, though)

    Oh, another $99 for a Greenlight page, too...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ido YehieliSeptember 28, 2012 at 2:18 PM

    I only payed 600 euros for my mac mini in 2009 & it has served me well for compiling mac/ios stuff. Never had to pay anything for software as I use haxe with the free & great flashdevelop (& the gimp for graphics).

    I did forget steam greenlight tho...

    I own 2 android devices, and ipod touch and a blackberry playbook for testing myself (luckily I got enough friends with ipads).

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownSeptember 28, 2012 at 5:23 PM

    the above is the cheap part. the "selling" is the expensive part. good PR can cost 1-2k per month, for say 3 months. Or paying for adverting.

    i put my game up to a few ios game sites. the big ones took no notice. the medium ones asked when they could chat about advertising and the little ones had no impact on sales or traffic. i wish i had some solutions to "selling".
    The game we created is cool and has damn fine graphics, but the spark didnt light.
    www.chubcheeks.com if u are curious about our game.

    ReplyDelete
  5. qubodupSeptember 28, 2012 at 5:47 PM

    I wonder what the Humble Store will do...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. UnknownSeptember 28, 2012 at 8:02 PM

      In regards to what?

      Cost? Probably stay free. They seem fairly exclusive at this point but you never know.

      Delete

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