You can PRE-ORDER the game right now on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch!
Yes, please do pre-order as it helps me look better to the big, fancy console companies and publishers in the future! This means more wacky games from me if we do well here!
If
you have already backed the game on the Fig crowd-funding we did, I
thank you endlessly!
Your physical and digital rewards are scheduled to
show up for you around the week of October 18th!
Who could have imagined I'd get to release a game on a Nintendo system?
Pretty wild!
Our very own Shoot 1UP has been nominated for a Pocket Gamer award!
That's pretty great, but it'd be even more amazing if it won and you can help with 3 simple clicks.
Pocket Gamer is an influential site, and it would be a HUGE deal to win an award from that site. Shoot 1UP is in the "Windows Phone Game of the Year" category along with some really big games like Call of Duty and Halo, so every vote counts!
UPDATE: We've gotten enough votes to enter the contest, thank you all!
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We're working towards a grant from Chase bank and Livingsocial for $250,000, but we need your vote of confidence!
In order to be officially considered, we need 250 votes by June 30th. Please do us the honor of voting for Mommy's Best Games for a chance at this excellent grant funding.
With this funding we would be able to increase the speed of our game development and expand releases to many more consoles and mobile platforms!
To vote you have to visit their site, search for "Mommy's Best Games" and click the "Vote" button. It's quick and easy as 1-2-3, but it does require a Facebook login <wince> please bear with it!
2. Scroll down and click "LOG IN & SUPPORT" on the lower right. This will require a Facebook login.
3. In the "business name" section (lower left) search "Mommy's Best Games".
Vote!
Thanks so much for your help and time, and please tell your gamer friends!
Tech info: Because the link to searching and voting is behind the FB login, there's no simple way for me to provide a straight link to the vote button. It's pretty obnoxious and we've tried for a while to suss out a link, but there's no way I can see. Thanks a ton for seeing this through!
Fight holiday food comas with THOUSANDS OF BULLETS!
Check out the Steam Fall sale, running through this weekend, November 27th.
Serious Sam: The Random Encounter, 50% off, only $2.49! http://store.steampowered.com/app/201480
2 words: Pixel Sam
2 more words: Kamikaze bait
If you've been on the fence about either game, hop down and snap these puppies
up! Tell your friends that would be interested (and even the ones that
wouldn't be ),
and thanks for the support!
And of course thanks to all the fans that
have already purchased and enjoyed--it's very much appreciated. We love getting to make games for you.
Both games are now 50% off, making each only $2.50! (200 MS Points)
Tell any friends who've been on the fence to take the plunge. Thanks!
(And both games still have free demos to check as well.)
Just in time for it's third birthday--Happy 3 years old Weapon of Choice (originally released November 14, 2008)!
I'm not certain how long the promotional sale will continue. I'd guess probably through this holiday weekend. Happy gaming!
Serious Sam Double D was released on PC for $7.99 on August 30th around 1pm EST and within about 5 hours a crack by the "Theta" group showed up on the web. That seems pretty good in terms of interest in the game to have a crack out that quickly! It's flattering honestly. But I'm worried some of the gamers downloading the game and enjoying it may not have yet purchased a copy as well.
I realize there is no demo of the game currently but we'll be releasing one shortly. UPDATE: The Free Demo for Serious Sam Double D is out now!
I also realize that even with a limited demo, some gamers may download the crack of the game to try it out with no demo restrictions to see if they like the whole thing. I'd simply like to plead with you that if downloaded a crack of Serious Sam Double Dand enjoyed it, please buy a copy or donate! Thanks!
Don't want to deal with Steam? Just want to keep the bootleg but still pay for it? No problem, you can donate to MBG as well! (Any Paypal info will not be used to prosecute, belittle, spam, or stalk. But we'll probably send you a thank you!)
Mommy's Best Games is a very small company of passionate developers, but passion doesn't manifest peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on our plates. We also need money in exchange for our fun games--if we miss out on a few hundred or thousand sales of the game due to pirating it's a BIG DEAL for us. You may have played half-way through the game, and thought "Oh, I'll pay for it at some point"--well consider this a friendly reminder to pay via the donate button or the Steam page!
Traffic The tough part of course is we don't know how many copies we're losing to cracks, but there are tons of pages floating around and we get a lot of traffic to the site from those pages. We've gotten requests that people want to contribute not deal with Steam so there's the new way with the donate button. The game was even cracked a second time after we've updated a few things recently!
DRM Free
I'd like to point out that while the non-cracked version of the game requires an internet activation to play, you can run Steam in offline mode and play the game that way as well. There is no restriction on the number of installs you can make once you've purchased the game. The Steam version of Serious Sam Double D only has traditional "copy protection".
Thank You!
Did you enjoy the Gunstacker system? The weird enemies? The crazy secrets? I hope so, and if you did,
purchasing a copy of the game or donating helps fund our future projects. Even if you didn't beat the whole game, please think about a purchase.
We'd like
to make even more games you'll enjoy! Every sale helps and thanks for your support! (And we'll definitely get the demo out very soon.)
UPDATE:
Explosionade is out now for only 80 MS Points! Check out the free trial!
Microsoft has fixed the dashboard at least for the moment and Top Downloads is working (as of October 6th, 2010). Unfortunately in the past, after the list is fixed, it often breaks again in a few months, without warning. Microsoft has offered no public explanation to developers or any assurance they've fixed it with any more certainty this time.
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Original article: Great news--Explosionadeis finished and ready for you to play! The bad news--I'm not going to release it till the Xbox Marketplace is less broken. Sorry, but I want the best launch possible, and when the Top Downloads list isn't up to date, it's a crappy time to release a game to Xbox Live Indie Games. (Gamers, jump to the end for when it will release; Developers--read on)
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What's Top Downloads?
On the Xbox 360's Dashboard, there are many digital marketplaces from which you can download games. If you go to the Indie Games section you'll see several game lists including New Arrivals and Top Downloads. New Arrivals shows the most recent 20 Xbox Live Indie Games uploaded to the service. As the name implies, Top Downloads shows the 20 games that are currently downloaded most. Think of Top Downloads as "Most Popular".
The Top Downloads list is powered by the sales and trial data compiled by Microsoft from the day prior. So for instance, if today is October 3rd, typically sales data would be available for October 2nd some time in the afternoon. Top Downloads always should reflect gamers choices the day before. That way, if a new game enters the New Arrivals list, then by the next day, if it has lots of gamers checking it out, it will also be in the Top Downloads list.
There are currently over 1,300 games available on the XBL Indie Games channel. Several games are released each day. Often times a game will only spend a few days in the New Arrivals list. If it hasn't garnered enough attention, it will slip off that visual list, and buried in the "Browse All" list where only the most determined gamers will seek it out.
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Why Aren't You Releasing Explosionade Yet?
If we released Explosionade today, but the Top Downloads list is not updating properly we will miss a huge chance for more sales.We love making games as a full time business. If we have a bad launch for Explosionade, it will greatly hurt our potential to carry on.
Basically the way the NewArrivals/Top Downloads system works is more adventurous gamers sift through all the releases that enter the New Arrivals list. Some of these games get downloaded by more gamers than others. If a game gets downloaded enough, it will show up in the Top Downloads list. From having data from Weapon of Choice, Shoot 1UP, and from talking to other XBLIG developers it's apparent having a game in the Top Downloads list can get you many more trials than slipping off all easy-to-find lists.
When Top Downloads is stuck, it's true some games are high in the list and get more downloads then. But eventually gamers will recognize the list is stuck (when sometimes data doesn't update for over a week) and gamers begin to ignore the channel more as it's obvious something's broken. Even though some games initially benefit from the list being stuck, eventually all games suffer from lower traffic.
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How Do You Know the Top Downloads List Is Broken?
One way is to simply check the Top Downloads list itself on the Xbox each day and see if the Top 20 are identical. That's pretty tedious to do, so if you are an XBLIG developer with a released game, you can simply check your sales data for any of your games and see if it reports data from the day prior. For instance, it's 11pm EST on October 3rd, but sales data for both Weapon of Choice and Shoot 1UP is only up to date till October 1st. The sales data drives the Top Downloads list. If sales data is late, the list is not updating. If you don't have any games released you can follow Mommy's Best Games on twitter or others, or check the XNA forums.
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Also, I publicly share sales data for Shoot 1UP from which I hope other developers can glean some marketing strategies and understand the XBLIG marketplace better. I also try to mark every time sales data is late in the Shoot 1UP spreadsheet (over to the right of the date).
To the right, you can see days data was late, or partial, which translates to a broken Top Downloads list.
What late data means in concrete terms is any games released on October 2nd are getting less potential representation. The following games were released on the 2nd:
Any interest gamers showed for these game is lost until the list updates again.
If we had released Explosionade yesterday, it would be missing potential time in the Top Downloads list and potential sales.
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So When Are You Releasing Explosionade?
Sales data has been spotty since September 28th, which means the Top Downloads list has been spotty in terms of reflecting gamers interests. In months past, the Top Downloads list has stayed stuck for days, sometimes over a week.
I really want to release Explosionade, as I publicly announced we could release by October 4th (Monday). It was ready in time for review earlier this weekend, but I've been waiting till Top Downloads is functioning properly.
Explosionade in all it's alien-stomping glory.
I'm hoping the list will start updating again properly by Monday evening. If it is, I'll put Explosionade into review, and if the game passes review, it will probably be available Thursday morning, October 7th.
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Above all, I really love the freedom the Xbox Live Indie Games channel affords developers to make console games. It's a fantastic marketplace that has really come into it's own with stand out titles like I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, Miner Dig Deep, Breath of Death VII, Protect Me Knight, SoulCaster, Inferno, Decimation X, and many more. I love developing games for the XBLIG when the system works and I want the service to continue. But if Top Downloads keeps getting stuck it's going to eventually impact developers and gamers and the channel will suffer.
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UPDATE:
The story was covered here on eurogamer.net. Here and around the web, some questions were presented I thought I'd explain with the original article.
"Why don't you just release it after the dashboard is working?"
Currently to submit a game to XBLIG it has to enter peer review. This system has worked very well as over 1,300 games have been submitted with a very low percentage of crashes. But to pass through the review it takes several days. At any given point the dashboard could break--even right when it's out of your hands and shows up freshly on the list. There's no developer control here, it's all up to Microsoft to fix the the broken dashboard.
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"Who's to say you'll be in the top list?"
I'm not saying Explosionade will automatically be in the Top Downloads, it's more that the possibility of getting into that list is basically removed completely for our game and anyone else releasing a game when the dashboard is broken. The system breaks down for new releases' potential when Top Downloads is stuck.
"But it only happens every month or two, what's the big deal?"
Any breaking is too often. A digital distribution system lives dies by it's useability and the reflection of current traffic. Look at any good website or marketplace from CNN to YouTube to Gamespot. There is always a section of 'most popular' which needs real-time data to survive and where most people go first. If this most popular section is broken, sites and markets lose traffic. As I mentioned earlier, once the game is released the developer has no control over it. If the list is broken, they will lose traffic and possible sales.
Here is detailed sales information and analysis for Shoot 1UP. I'll work to update it daily so consider bookmarking the page and checking back each evening.
Make sure to click various tabs above for cool graphs of the data!
For some time, I've been sharing detailed sales information for Weapon of Choice, annotated with notes based on trends, press, etc. I hope it's been helpful to other developers trying to understand at least some piece of the XBLIG platform. Being a community I think a great way for everyone to make more informed business decisions is to start by sharing sales information about their games.
Recently JForce Games starting sharing daily sales information on their blog for their game Avatar Showdown. It was a brilliant move in terms of business visibility and data management and I commend them. I was inspired and decided to share Shoot 1UP's data as well to help contribute to the data landscape and understanding of the wild, wild west we call XBL Indie Games.
For any other devs interested, and I certainly hope there are many I'd like to share the way I created the system above. You can comment or write me if you have any questions or can suggest improvements. Because I haven't fully automated this, I do limit some of the slicing and dicing based on time (eg. not looking at countries, etc). But I am open to cool new ideas still.
Keep in mind, I'm doing this the fairly manual way. It takes some time to set it up, but from there, it's not too bad (minute or two) to update each night.
Intial setup: Step 0: I'm using MS Excel to shape the data before taking it to Google Docs (the demo of the newest version, currently). Get the demo, then set up an account with Google and start up Google docs.
Step 1: DL all your sales data since the start. Sort by Date then by Price. You should something like get this:
Step 2: Set up an AutoSum of each day's trials, and their sales. Then do an AutoSum (division version) of each day's conversion rate. I'm sure some masters of Excel can make this much quicker on the inital setup.
Step 3: In a new sheet, start a new column of daily totals for sales, trials, and CRs. Copy these over from your raw data. Form a column for the date and put one Date to the left of sales and trials, and one to the left of Conversion Rate. We're still working in Excel to prep to upload to Google Docs.
That pic is what you should have going in Excel.
Step 4: If you want more analysis, set it up now. I added a running total as well (but had to add a new date/day number column also).
Step 5: Ready to go to Google Docs. Upload your Excel sheet to there that has the multiple Date columns with your processed data. I'd say do this as a separate new file, from your raw data, so it's less confusing.
Step 6: The data from Excel should show up fine in the Docs. If not, check the help. From there, select the first date column, the sales, and the trials, then click Insert->Chart. I moved mine to their own sheet.
The key to getting it to show up (if it's not) is have the Date as the first column, and when editing the Chart select, select both "Use row 1 as labels", and "Use column XYZ as labels". I had problems otherwise.
Step 7: Pretty things up. I went back and moved the 'raw data' to the right (like JForce) and then made a new 'front page' of data. I have to update both spots. Not ideal, but it looks better. The front page is easier to see trends for weeks, and write in notes, and see the totals.
Upkeep: Download the most recent bit of sales for your game. Sort that day by Date and then Price. Sum up sales, trials, do the CR. Copy these over to the google docs file. I put the data in "Charts data" and the front sheet "Sales and Notes". This should update the totals and all the charts.
An alternative that JForce's Jeremy (see comments for his explanation, could make more sense than mine) pointed out is that if we use the "maths" we can make this super quick. View your new sales and trials for the entire period which will include the new day's sales and trials. Subtract the new sales/trials from your old one (in your current google docs). Then take those values, divide for your CR and copy this new day's data over. Obviously make sure the new "total" values are the same as the ones you saw in the first place on you MyBusiness page. (Note though, this method will not work for a game that's been out for over a year, as the "full" data on CC only goes back 1 year. You'll have to start appending it in a stand-alone file at the at point. Or alternatively you could keep track of the current months sales/trials then subtract the new total on the CC page each day from that, starting again with each month. Using this math as Jeremy pointed out does save you the step of having to sum up all the sales/trails per each day which is more tedious to copy around.)
Make sure for each chart when you edit it, the "What Data?" part includes the newest data you added (you may need to extend it, for example: C2:C40 needs to increase to C2:c41 once you add in enough days). Check each chart to make sure the new data shows up.
Wrap Up: That's it for setting it up. For about 45 days of data, it took about an hour to prep them and about an hour or so to learn Google Docs and get it all rolling. If you have 1.5 years of data, you might consider displaying weekly or monthly sales so you don't have to mess with it as much. I may end up doing that with Weapon of Choice sales. Or be smart and automate it in some awesome way!
To display it here, on the spreadsheet that you edit, on the far right, I picked "Share" and embedded it in this page there.
Please tell me how it goes for you in the comments and share your site links!
As you can see from the graph, Thanksgiving day/weekend was nicely higher than a normal week. And weekends in general were higher, but Mondays were lower, at least for trial downloads.
Also this post I wanted to share the first year data from November 19th 2008 to 2009 since Weapon of Choice just celebrated its firstbirthday.
Trial downloads: 182,055 Sales: 11,293 (400 MS Points: 10,250, 240 MS Points: 1043)
Conversion rate's about 6.2% for that period, including both prices.
Make sure to click the sales label below for past month data!
First edition of monthly sales numbers, and it's pretty interesting!
(Click for zoom)
This is for sales of Weapon of Choice for October 2009 which includes dropping the price from 400 MS Points to 240 MS Points.
Trial downloads: 13,118 Total sales: 870 165 at 400 MS Points 705 at 240 MS Points
Our conversion rate is about 6.6% which higher than it has been.
In the graph, you can clearly see the jump in sales once we dropped the price. Some Indie Games' sales haven't improved with dropping the price. Weapon of Choice's sales have probably increased because it's fortunately had a lot of press and critical praise, so it worked out pretty well.
Update: Broken down by 240 vs 400 we have: Trial downloads October 1st to the 12th (400 point period): 4,221 With 165 sales, the conversion rate is 3.9%
Trial downloads October 13th to the 31st (240 point period): 8,897 With 705 sales, the conversion rate is 7.9%
Update 2: Average trial downloads per day for 400 point period: 351 Average trial downloads per day for 240 point period: 494 Trial downloads increases approximately 1.4 times daily after the price was lowered.
Additionally it's reasonable to conclude we had a revenue increase for this month as well. We can approximate how many much money we would have grossed if we simply had kept the 400 points as follows: 351 average downloads a day * 31 days in the month = 10881 downloads 10881 downloads * 0.039 = 424 sales We'll use the American prices to make our math simpler. 424 * $5 = $2,120
And here's what we actually grossed for the month: 165 (400 Point sales) * $5 = 825 705 (240 Point sales) * $3 = 2115 825+2115 = $2,940 We can then divide 2,940 by 2,120 and see that our revenue increased by about 1.38 times.
Weapon of Choice recently passed the 10,000 sales mark, selling at 400 MS points! While I could have picked 9,837 sales as our arbitrary milestone, I thought 10k had a better ring to it. We're very happy and grateful to all the fans that have supported the game along the way. We know you have lots of gaming choices and it's a honor that you've picked our game to have and to hold and to use to kill disgusting aliens.
Originally we had higher expectations for the service. Since then we've recalibrated our estimates and believe 10k is a solid achievement, as it places Weapon of Choice in the Top Ten best-selling Indie Games to date*. And to better convey the size, I've compiled a small list of relative concepts that 10k copies of Weapon of Choice represents:
47,823,213 gallons of alien blood spilled.
919,534 brushes with Death. Under similar circumstances, Death would have stolen player's lives in other action games.
423,525 references by gamers to Wilford Brimley, followed by 173,189 trips to his wiki page.
276,207 frowns turned upside-down as the Vengeance Missile did its job.
184,622 WTF's when encountering the various ungodly alien invaders throughout the game.
(All statistics discretely recorded by PARMAbots tele-imported from the year 2188.)
On a serious note, when possible I like to share information about our business's inner workings with the hopes of helping other developers in some way down the road. I want reveal information about Weapon of Choice's sales to encourage others to share more information about their sales more frequently. Xbox Indie Games is not even a year old and has shown it is different from the other digital stores. The more information developers have, the better decisions they can make in the future.
Weapon of Choice from November 19, 2008 to September 21, 2009: Total sales : 10,010 Total trial downloads: 160,000+ Approximate conversion rate: 6.25%
SALES
This is a graph of the running total for sales. (Click to zoom!)
And this shows the daily totals for sales.
TRIAL DOWNLOADS
Here is the running total for trial downloads.
And here is the daily trial downloads.
In addition to on-going game development posts, I also plan to release each month's new sales of Weapon of Choice on the dev log here for all to see. (*Source: Xbox 360 dashboard->Game Marketplace->Indie Games->Browse All->All->Sort by Best Selling)
When we heard that Indie Games would be available in Japan we started work immediately on translating a press release and contacting the Japanese press to help promote Weapon of Choice. We hired a friend of a friend who speaks Japanese to help us translate our materials to make the extra effort when dealing with the press there. The sad news is I don't know if any of that helped. We haven't been contacted by anyone that we think was influenced by what we sent. BUT the extra cool hyper super jetmode news is--Famitsu contacted us! Yes, that Famitsu, and out of the blue I received an email from a writer who was interested in an interview. We received a copy of the magazine recently and wanted to share it with everyone. We're in the Otaku section, but guess what--I don't mind! In fact, that section is almost as big as the rest of the magazine covering "proper" games, so I think it's all pretty good. Sure, I haven't had the text translated, but I'm just hoping for the best that everything reads pretty well.
I'll take a quick business detour and show how the Famitsu article impacted downloads for Weapon of Choice.
(Click for more detail)
On the 9th and 10th of September Weapon of Choice had 40 and 56 trial downloads respectively, up from 12 on the previous day, so I imagine the magazine hit newsstands around the 9th. (Do they still have newsstands in Japan?) Sadly sales didn't really spike with the trials, though at least they continued to hop around between 1 to 2 sales a day in Japan.
Even after skimming around the web about how Otaku is perceived in Japan I'm fairly confused. Since it's not definitive I just hope for the positive side of things, that when Japanese kids see Weapon of Choice in that section they find the screenshots intriguing. How about you? Do you think Otaku a pejorative term or not?
Prepare thine eyeballs for fancy data picture overload!
(Click on any graph to see more detail! Sorry, but I scaled the previews down to fit into the tiny blog width. )
I've shuffled and jumbled the Weapon of Choice numbers from sales, free downloads, countries, dates, and put them all together in pretty picture form.
Up first is one of the most informative graphs. This shows free downloads and sales along with important dates of media coverage. It's pretty obvious that when we got media coverage, we got a bump in downloads.
(Remember--click the pictures for up close details!)
The biggest spike was of course around the Community Games launch day. The largest other spike was when Microsoft sent out their weekly email to Xbox 360 owners, and this one included a small part about Community Games and Weapon of Choice.
It was also really nice to see a spike in January 2009 related to the announcement of our speed run contest.
The following is the same data, but with the logarithmic view to better see some of the action in early 2009. This next group is interesting as you can see trials and sales by country. Keep an eye on the number value for first giant spike, per country.
I think the USA vs UK comparison is interesting when you consider the first and second large spikes on the left. Here we see that the second 'Xbox News' spike is not only larger absolutely, but also proportionately.
The US "Xbox News-to-CG Launch" spike ratio is about: 2,000 to 7,000. The second spike here is nearly 30% the first spike The UK "Xbox News-to-CG Launch" spike ratio is about: 380 to 1,750. The second spike here is about 20% of the first spike.
Also, there was also apparently some UK coverage of which I have no good record (not surprising) as around Valentines day, there was a much bigger increase in downloads there, than in the US.
On to the rest of the WORLD! I'd like to close with a delicious slice of pie. American pie. All-American Apple pie. Or "Triple A" pie for short.
But then again the UK slice is pretty tasty too. What do they eat in their pies again? Cow brains? Sheep guts? Whatever it is, it tastes pretty good here.
And let's not forget Canada! That was over half of our UK downloads, which is pretty impressive considering most Americans don't even know they're 'up' there. I like to think of their slice as covered in maple-syrup as I'm pretty sure they can't grow any sort of fruit there. Or maybe Ice? Can you have ice pie? Update: By request I put together another pie which yielded some interesting results.
This shows approximate percentage sales and conversion rates (ratio of people that bought the game to people that downloaded the game). What's interesting here is the noticeably lower conversion rates in France, Italy, and Spain.
This could be the result of several factors such as differing cultural interests, but it could also be because the game was only available in English which turned off more gamers. While there's not a lot of story in Weapon of Choice, there is certainly some dialog (over 200 lines!) and not being able to enjoy the story, the menus, and the controls could have contributed to less purchases.
In conclusion, I know it sounds obvious that getting media coverage should increase downloads, but occasionally you get people questioning the idea. I find it comforting, like feeling terra firma beneath my feet, to see coverage pretty clearly linked with downloads, here with the real data.
(Edit: Read to the end and check out the UPDATES on this story!)
True to their word, Microsoft has provided Community Games sales data by the end of March (2009). The results are, in one word, sobering.
First, let me just reiterate that we have been very upfront about what Mommy’s Best is trying to achieve. We want to make kick ass games, full-time. I left one of the best video game employers to strike out and make my own games. This is my full time job, I am not a hobbyist and Weapon of Choice shows that. It is a full-fledged game, which took a full year to make. Not only did we hope sales would recoup the savings we spent during the year of development, we hoped it would provide enough financing to support the development of our next game. So, as the end of the month started breathing down our necks, we had our numbers categorized into:
10,000 units = “That hurts” 20,000 units = “We can live with that” and 30,000 units or more = “We’re in business!”
Obviously, with a $5 game and these projections, we’re not looking to make millions, buy a Porsche, or vacation on the Riviera. We just wanted a sufficient salary and money for future game development and marketing.
The time for truth... Weapon of Choice’s sales, from November 19th through March 26th, made below “That hurts.”
At GDC 2009, Microsoft stated that “Several Community Games top sellers will be taking home more income from four months of sales than the average U.S. citizen earns in a full year.” According to the US Census 2005, “median annual earnings were $32,000.” Based on this, it is fair to say that Weapon of Choice is a top seller. Although this number may look enticing to a hobbyist, we can only look at sales data and what it means for Mommy’s Best Games, taking into consideration (not necessarily in this order):
Microsoft’s baseline cut of 30% and remittance rate.
Microsoft’s potential additional 10% to 30% cut depending on the amount of Microsoft promotion for the game.(Edit note: it has come to our attention that Microsoft has "decided to maintain the 70/30 split across the board whether your game was featured or not." Therefore, this is not longer a factor to consider. Thank you Microsoft!)
Royalties owed to our contractors.
State and federal taxes.
Cost of development, not including salaries, i.e. membership, software licenses, travel, hardware and marketing.
Although this is only 4 months of sales, except by the grace of God or a divine new marketing strategy, we do not anticipate seeing sales staying this strong.
What all that means to our bottom-line, we do not yet know, but it does not feel great. Maybe rational people hang up their keyboard and call it quits. But if you played Weapon of Choice, you realize we’re far from rational. We feel that Mommy’s Best Games has made a name for itself. Just check out our press page!
Our new title, currently in development, has recently moved from preproduction into production. It just hit that magical point, the exciting part in the development process, when the game is actually FUN! (Non-developers note: it takes a while during development before fun games actually become fun). Even while I was processing the low sales numbers I was almost annoyed with myself for being excited about waking up the next day to work on our next game.
I’d like to close by thanking all the fans and journalists who’ve supported Mommy’s Best Games and enjoyed roasting some freaky alien nut-sacks. Stay with us, I promise the next game will be even better!
UPDATE 1:Weapon of Choice is being prepared for release to the PC market, but we don't have a date yet.
),
and thanks for the support!
