Hi,

We are an indie startup company and we are planning to release our first game this coming Christmas .
Are there any special protocols or things we need to follow especially around Xmas time? ie. Should we plan to submit the app 2 weeks before Xmas?

Thanks!

The ios approval process can take quite a long time. I can imagine that around christmas there will be even more apps submitted than usual.

2 weeks seems to be a bit short if you plan to have your app available around christmas.

So submit 2 months ahead (last week). If it's ready to submit now, why not submit now?

Agreed, although there is a big difference between packaged goods and digital distribution.

In the packaged goods market, a "Christmas release" usually means becoming available in October, starting an advertising campaign this week (first week of November) aiming for a peak around Thanksgiving weekend. The peak of shopping is usually the fourth weekend of November (Black Friday through Cyber Monday). If you are not plentiful on store shelves by the third week on November you have missed your window.

In the digital goods market it is much more hit-and-miss. Unlike physical goods they are not usually purchased in advance. People might buy digital keys early, they may also buy gift cards or certificates that can be opened. It is more likely that they'll get an IOU type notice and the actual purchase will come on the holidays themselves --- so be prepared to offer big deals and also heavy traffic on the holiday itself.

On one of our digital teams we had some of our big sales numbers and also the most successful promotions in the week between Christmas and New Years. Parents are home, they're on the computer, they have time to play and they want stuff. This in turn means the support staff need to be on hand to handle orders, errors, questions, and problems.

Thanks for the info guys, we do not have a full working build yet though. Looks like we will try to get a working build approved asap then patch in more content later.

Thanks for the info guys, we do not have a full working build yet though. Looks like we will try to get a working build approved asap then patch in more content later.

Honestly, that's the way to not do it in the mobile world. You basically get one shot to get people hooked. There is so much information overload in mobile app stores (along with short attention spans of most players) that they generally won't play a demo and then wait two months for the full game. Unless you are a AAA studio that doesn't seem to work too well in the PC/console world either.

Thanks for the info guys, we do not have a full working build yet though. Looks like we will try to get a working build approved asap then patch in more content later.

Honestly, that's the way to not do it in the mobile world. You basically get one shot to get people hooked. There is so much information overload in mobile app stores (along with short attention spans of most players) that they generally won't play a demo and then wait two months for the full game. Unless you are a AAA studio that doesn't seem to work too well in the PC/console world either.

Sorry what I intended was to get the initial build approved and then have it on "Developer Hold"?, and won't release it until we patch everything we want in.

Will this make the approval process quicker since its only the patch that now needs the approval rather than the initial bulk build? Or will it have to go through the same initial process regardless?

From my experience its all dependent on apples schedule. We have submitted apps and gotten a turnaround time of 5 days, then re submit the same app a month later with an update and the process to take 3 weeks.

I don't think their is any way of knowing ahead of time exactly how long it will take. Also to note that if they deny you because of an issue the process starts from scratch again.

Longest time we ever had to wait was 3 weeks without a denial.

The longest we had to wait with getting denied and having to fix issues was a month and a half. They found an issue about 2 weeks after submission, we fixed it sent it back and 1 week later they got back to us with another failure we had to fix. The last time we sent it in it was then 3 weeks.

Thanks for the info guys, we do not have a full working build yet though. Looks like we will try to get a working build approved asap then patch in more content later.

Honestly, that's the way to not do it in the mobile world. You basically get one shot to get people hooked. There is so much information overload in mobile app stores (along with short attention spans of most players) that they generally won't play a demo and then wait two months for the full game. Unless you are a AAA studio that doesn't seem to work too well in the PC/console world either.

Sorry what I intended was to get the initial build approved and then have it on "Developer Hold"?, and won't release it until we patch everything we want in.

Will this make the approval process quicker since its only the patch that now needs the approval rather than the initial bulk build? Or will it have to go through the same initial process regardless?

It will have to go through the submission process again. The first submission always seems to be more involved and take longer. So your resubmit should be faster. But as the poster above said, submit times are all over the place and there is no rhyme or reason to it. We've submitted an update to one game with another in the queue and it got approved first. We've had games waiting for review for two weeks and get approved in 10 minutes (according to Apple's submission log). The sooner you submit your full game the better.