quote: Original post by LordKronos
To take this calculation a step further, according to the web site, you get 35% of retail sales. So, that means
total revenue = $180,000/0.35 = approx $514,000
Thats 1/2 a million dollars in revenue. Sounds pretty ambitious.

Even if you take the low end of the scale ($1000/month), thats $36,000 in royalties over 3 years, and over $100,000 in revenues. Still seems a bit ambitious to me. Broken down by sale price, thats:
10,000 units @ $10 each (280 units/month)
5,000 @ $20 each (140 units/month)
2,500 @ $40 each (70 units/month)

While I cant seem to find any actual statistics on shareware sales (maybe someone else can do it for me...) these number do seem a bit high for the average game. And again, this is the low end of the scale...for the high end, multiply these number by 10.

Your calculations are correct. And you''re right -- these numbers do seem high for the average game. But we''re not interested in publishing average games.

I look for games that I believe can do at least $250,000 in lifetime sales. Fitznik, which we published in late October, should hit $250,000 to $500,000 eventually -- it will easily pass $100,000, since it''s well into the five-figure range already. I''m also just about done negotiating our first licensing agreement for Fitznik, which should generate tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue. Fitznik''s developer is already working on an expansion pack for the game and also has a great idea for an original game after that. Fitznik sells for $19.95, and Dweep Gold sells for $24.95, but we also added a $39.95 bundle of both games together last month (nothing more than one extra checkbox on the order form), and we''re selling a few of those each day as well. For accounting purposes, I took the $5 discount from Dweep Gold, so Fitznik''s developer still gets the same full royalty amount for bundle sales. I''m pretty sensitive to the idea of overbundling, since certain publishers overdo it to the point where they make money and the developers each get just a tiny slice of the pie.

Why do people pay $39.95 for Dweep Gold and Fitznik when they could get the latest retail game for the same price? Lots of reasons. For one, it''s not the same people. The people that like our puzzle games aren''t typically playing 3D shooters and RTS games. Also if they like the demos, they have to buy from us or one of our licensees. The games are unique enough that people don''t mentally compare them to others, such as you might see comparisons of Quake III vs. Unreal Tournament. There are a lot of casual gamers out there who are really turned off by violence, and the brick-and-mortar retailers aren''t meeting this need well enough.

Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

quote: Original post by dex7
ironside: i just must agree

steve: nice to meet a big developer here. i''ve read most of your shareware bussines-related tutorials from around the net, they are all great.
btw. Dexterity looks trustworthy to me, you have a lot of info and good FAQ section in your dev section. many other shareware-publishers just have like one page of incomplete info. i really appreciate your approach.

i would have one question that i haven''t find answer on your page, it is about statistics:
will i get some statistics how is my game doing, not just sales: like number of downloads/where it was submitted/what PR were sent/if there are some ad campaigns running...

and one more: if i agree to publish through you - nonexclusive - can i still have a slightly other version of a game on my webpage with order link going directly to my site (ofcourse a version that you''ll distribute will go to your order page)

thanks, for reply
-dex

Thanks, dex. By the end of the week, I should actually have a small articles section with 14 articles added to our web site. These are basically the articles I''ve writeen for the ASP newsletter over the past couple years. So far I''ve got 12 articles converted to HTML and 2 to go. I''ll post the link to that section once it''s ready. Over time I hope to expand this section with a lot more articles on the practical business side of how to succeed as an indie (whether you publish through us or go it alone).

Your question about statistics is a good one. We don''t do this now, but it wouldn''t be hard to do, at least for the statistics we can directly measure. As a developer myself, I''d also certainly be curious to know what the publisher is doing with my game at any one point. Fitznik''s developer, for instance, was surprised to see a write-up on his game in his local newspaper one morning (he lives in New Zealand), which was due to our PR campaign. I''ll add this idea to my projects list.

For your second question, if you publish with us nonexclusively, then you are free to sell any version of the game through your own site with your own order form. In fact, some developers have asked if they could publish with us at the Platinum (exclusive) level and allow us to pursue third-party licenses for their game, but they just want to be able to sell the game through their own site. I understand this, so I''m currently trying to figure out a way to make it work. There are a lot of factors to consider, especially who does tech support.

Right now I''m looking to hire several more people. We have a Jobs page with several open positions, so if anyone knows someone who''d be a good fit for any of these positions, please send them my way.

What I''d love to do is setup a real-time system so developers can log-in and see how their sales are doing in real-time, along with projections for their next royalty check. I think it would also be nice to see how your sales are doing relative to other games in your genre or the best/worst/average sales for all games that month. Also, if we get a royalty check from one of our licensees for your game, then that amount could be posted to your account, so you''ll know how much you''ll be getting. This is one reason I need to hire a webmaster, so we can get all of this setup.

Virtually all of Dexterity''s gross profits this year will be reinvested into growing the company. We''re debt-free, and I think we''ve got enough revenue to grow the company from its own cashflow without any need for outside funding.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

quote: Original post by dex7
steve, your new game (is it developed by Dexterity or just published?) - Arizona Smith looks really good - when can i expect some screen shots / demo?

Yes, Arizona Smith is an internal project. I''m going to do my best to get it released by the end of this quarter, so I''ll certainly have some screen shots and a demo by then. I tend to focus primarily on gameplay first, so nice looking screen shots often don''t come together until late in the project.

My original goal was to release just 4 new games this year as a publisher and 2 internally developed games (Arizona Smith and Olympus), but it''s looking more like we''ll be releasing 10-20 new games this year, since we''ve gotten a lot more high-quality indie submissions than expected. I think there are about 4 publishable games just from the last two weeks of submissions.




Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

quote: Original post by Siebharinn
Thanks for dropping by to clear things up. I checked out your website, and I love your bug free guarantee. I wish more companies were gutsy like that.

Do you just have the seven games listed on your site?

If someone had a game that was a little more technical than the games you have listed, would you still consider it?

Thanks.

Yes, we just have the seven games listed on our site. Dweep Gold and Fitznik are the best-selling ones and bring in the bulk of sales. I think we can reach 20 products by the end of the year. We discontinued the original Dweep game and both expansion packs because these are now included in the gold version, and hardly anyone was buying the older packs once we included them in the gold version.

Games that are technical in nature can still sell well. I''ve developed a good sense of what will sell, so I''d have to see the game to know for sure. I''m not afraid to take risks on creative new ideas. The main question I ask is, "Will our customers want to own this game?" If we can sell it to our existing customers, that''s a good enough risk to go for it. Right now I''m evaluating each new submission personally (until I can find a producer to take over this role and help filter some of the submissions).

One advantage we have is that we don''t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch a new game. It costs us several thousand dollars to go from first contact to releasing a new game we publish (including the QA work and initial marketing), so that''s not a huge risk, and we recoup that pretty quickly. After that, we continue doing marketing for the game as long as it''s effective.

So a game being technical won''t rule it out automatically. Presently I''m looking for very casual games because I know we can get good sales for these. But we also have a strategy game in development (Olympus) that we''re going to use to try to broaden our reach.

Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
actually, it should be 180,000*.35 (notice multiplication, not division). that comes out to $63,000, not $514,000. I don''t think they would give you 514,000 if it only made 180,000. otherwise, this sounds great - a good way for shareware developers to sell some games and get some real exposure

No, you are figuring backwords. The poster that I was responding to said:

quote:
3 years = $5000 x 12 x 3 = $180.000 (and that''s just YOUR cut).

$180,000 = YOUR cut = Royalties

Meaning:
TotalSales * 0.35 = Royalties
TotalSales * 0.35 = $180,000

Divide both sides by 0.35:
TotalSales = $180,000/0.35 = approx $514,000