Game Room Sales Analysis
Games have timeless value. At least, that's what I tell myself at 3AM while slaving over some annoying bug or missing animation. Microsoft's Game Room is an attempt to prove and monetize this value. Judging by the latest sales numbers, it needs our help.
Quick Background: Game Room is Krome and Microsoft's attempt at bringing retrogaming to modern consoles. You buy games that you put into your own little arcade full of your friends' avatars. It's like Barbie for the Atari generation. Sell some old arcade games to us crusty old gamers, and make some profit. Free money, right? Well, each of these things have to be individually licensed. They need to re-create the original cabinet artwork in 3D, make it work with appropriate emulators, add in code for awards and leaderboards. It needs to be tested, debugged, and promoted. That all adds up to a non-negligible amount of money.
The week of 7/14/2010 was a banner weak for Game Room. Not only did it see another weekly content push, but it also saw the release of a long-awaited update. For our purposes, the update included a dynamic leaderboard system. This shows your world ranking as you play. And when you have zero score, you see just how long the leaderboard is. This means we can now get rough title sales data just by playing the games.
Technical Details (or just skip this part)
For this study, I've purchsed all 15 of the titles available over the course of 3 weeks, to see how sales trend on a day-by-day basis. Obviously, this is specific to these titles, and only those titles that have leaderboards availble. Barnstorm and Fishing derby, for example, which one would expect to have low sales, also have no leaderboards and therefore no way of verifying scores. Titles are cut off once they reach the 100,000 sales mark. Older Game Room titles, like Millipede, have hit this number. None of the new ones even got close.
Numbers are rounded down to 1 significant digit by Game Room. A game showing 5000 rankings could have anywhere between 5000 and 6000 on the leaderboard. If 10,000 is showing, the real number could be up to 20,000.
Similarly, for estimation sake there is the presumption that %50 of players don't bring their games to the ranking leaderboards.
End Technical
Data
The data is not looking rosy. For reference, a normal retail game should sell about 1,000,000 units to be a solid reasonable success. Downloadable titles, depending on size and budget, can succeed on 100,000 downloads. Some of the games in this study sold about 1% of that.
Results
How much money is this?
240 points
These figures are minimum basline figures. If we assume that there are 50% of players who never play a game in ranked mode (therefore not showing up on leaderboards), and 25% who buy the "full" option of the game including PC play, total sales numbers can be increased by X percent
Microsoft splits their sales 70/30 for indie titles... Microsoft keeps 70% for distribution, promotion, handling the money, and the platform: the indie keeps 30% for production. For sake of assumption, let's guess that Game Room has the same split. Let's also assume that the developers, Krome, are splitting the remaining funds 50 / 50 with the owners of the rights of the arcade games. This may be way off (Microsoft being the publisher might be keeping more, the original game makers might be making more... Krome certainly isn't making more), but the split then looks like 70 / 15 / 15 between Microsoft / Krome / and the people who made the original game. This is probably wrong in some fundamental details, but it is a good starting point.
Questions
1. But what about sales of previous week's games?
Here, we're charting a total lifetime sales graph estimate.
*. You're doing your estimates wrong!
Probably. I'm a designer, not a professional statistician. If you have a better way of estimating the numbers, please contact me. I would love to revise using better accounting practices.
*. Are you affiliated with Microsoft or Krome in any way?
No. I'm a fan of Microsoft's development platforms in general. And I love the work that Krome has put into Game Room. But I am not affiliated with them.
*. How are older games doing?
Let's see. going back a week to June 7th, Kaboom, a legendary 2600 title that suffers a bit from needing a paddle, has sales between 300 and 400. That's pretty much a fail.
*. So what can we do?
Really, the biggest thing Game Room has been suffering from is a lack of information on the weekly updates. Re-tweet the weekly release list, and push your favorite blog of choice for more coverage of Game Room in the weekly download sections. Game Room has a facebook page which stays remarkably up-to-date.
----- Data!
(Note: I've posted this without proper graphing and trimming of the bad data, in response to a user query. Pretty graphs of the below data should go here. )
All of pack 007
Week of June 14th
2600
Quadrun - Th 40 F 50 S 50 Sun 60 Mon7/19 60 Tu --- W 70 th [d] F 70 S 70 Sun - Mon 7/26 70 Tu 2000 Wed 100 Thu 6000 Fri - Sat 80 Sun 80 Mon - Tue - Wed 80
Arcade
Gyruss - Th 700 F 800 S 1000 Sun 1000 Mon7/19 1000 Tu 1000 W 1000 Th [d] F [d] S 1000 Sun - Mon 7/26 1000 Tu 20000 Wed x Thu 20000 Fri - Sat 2000 Sun 1000 Mon - 1000 Tue - Wed 1000
Intellivision
Hover Force - Th 30 F 40 S 50 Sun 50 Mon7/19 50 Tu 2000 W 60 Th [d] F [d] S 60 Sun - Mon 7/26 70 Tu 70 Wed 70 Thu 70 Fri - Sat 70 Sun 80 Mon 80 Tue - Wed 80
Intellivision
Tower of Doom - W7/21 6000 Th [d] F 100 S 100 Sun - Mon 7/26 100 Tu 100 Wed x Thu 100 Fri - Sat 200 Sun 10000 Mon 200 Tue 200 Wed 200
2600
Gravitar - w7/21 16 Th [d] F 40 S 1000 Sun -Mon 7/26 50 Tu 50 Wed x Thu x Fri - Sat 10000 Sun 70 Mon 70 Tue 70 Wed 70
Arc
Yie Ar Kung Fu - w7/21 1000 Th [d] F 400 S 500 Sun -Mon 7/26 600 Tu 600 Wed x Thu x Fri - Sat 800 Sun 800 Mon 2000 Tue 10000 Wed 900
---
2600
Decathalon Wed 100 Thu 100 Fri - Sat 100 Sun 800 Mon - Tue 200 Wed 200
Asteroids Wed 100 Thu 100 Fri - Sat 200 Sun - Mon 200 Tue - Wed 300
Frostbite Wed x Thu x Fri - Sat 200 Sun - Mon - Tue 1000 Wed 300
Arc
Jailbreak Wed 10000 Thu 500 Fri - Sat 700 Sun 800 Mon 1000 Tue - Wed 1000
Kaboom Mon7/19 - 300 400
Quick Background: Game Room is Krome and Microsoft's attempt at bringing retrogaming to modern consoles. You buy games that you put into your own little arcade full of your friends' avatars. It's like Barbie for the Atari generation. Sell some old arcade games to us crusty old gamers, and make some profit. Free money, right? Well, each of these things have to be individually licensed. They need to re-create the original cabinet artwork in 3D, make it work with appropriate emulators, add in code for awards and leaderboards. It needs to be tested, debugged, and promoted. That all adds up to a non-negligible amount of money.
The week of 7/14/2010 was a banner weak for Game Room. Not only did it see another weekly content push, but it also saw the release of a long-awaited update. For our purposes, the update included a dynamic leaderboard system. This shows your world ranking as you play. And when you have zero score, you see just how long the leaderboard is. This means we can now get rough title sales data just by playing the games.
Technical Details (or just skip this part)
For this study, I've purchsed all 15 of the titles available over the course of 3 weeks, to see how sales trend on a day-by-day basis. Obviously, this is specific to these titles, and only those titles that have leaderboards availble. Barnstorm and Fishing derby, for example, which one would expect to have low sales, also have no leaderboards and therefore no way of verifying scores. Titles are cut off once they reach the 100,000 sales mark. Older Game Room titles, like Millipede, have hit this number. None of the new ones even got close.
Numbers are rounded down to 1 significant digit by Game Room. A game showing 5000 rankings could have anywhere between 5000 and 6000 on the leaderboard. If 10,000 is showing, the real number could be up to 20,000.
Similarly, for estimation sake there is the presumption that %50 of players don't bring their games to the ranking leaderboards.
End Technical
Data
The data is not looking rosy. For reference, a normal retail game should sell about 1,000,000 units to be a solid reasonable success. Downloadable titles, depending on size and budget, can succeed on 100,000 downloads. Some of the games in this study sold about 1% of that.
Results
How much money is this?
240 points
These figures are minimum basline figures. If we assume that there are 50% of players who never play a game in ranked mode (therefore not showing up on leaderboards), and 25% who buy the "full" option of the game including PC play, total sales numbers can be increased by X percent
Microsoft splits their sales 70/30 for indie titles... Microsoft keeps 70% for distribution, promotion, handling the money, and the platform: the indie keeps 30% for production. For sake of assumption, let's guess that Game Room has the same split. Let's also assume that the developers, Krome, are splitting the remaining funds 50 / 50 with the owners of the rights of the arcade games. This may be way off (Microsoft being the publisher might be keeping more, the original game makers might be making more... Krome certainly isn't making more), but the split then looks like 70 / 15 / 15 between Microsoft / Krome / and the people who made the original game. This is probably wrong in some fundamental details, but it is a good starting point.
Questions
1. But what about sales of previous week's games?
Here, we're charting a total lifetime sales graph estimate.
*. You're doing your estimates wrong!
Probably. I'm a designer, not a professional statistician. If you have a better way of estimating the numbers, please contact me. I would love to revise using better accounting practices.
*. Are you affiliated with Microsoft or Krome in any way?
No. I'm a fan of Microsoft's development platforms in general. And I love the work that Krome has put into Game Room. But I am not affiliated with them.
*. How are older games doing?
Let's see. going back a week to June 7th, Kaboom, a legendary 2600 title that suffers a bit from needing a paddle, has sales between 300 and 400. That's pretty much a fail.
*. So what can we do?
Really, the biggest thing Game Room has been suffering from is a lack of information on the weekly updates. Re-tweet the weekly release list, and push your favorite blog of choice for more coverage of Game Room in the weekly download sections. Game Room has a facebook page which stays remarkably up-to-date.
----- Data!
(Note: I've posted this without proper graphing and trimming of the bad data, in response to a user query. Pretty graphs of the below data should go here. )
All of pack 007
Week of June 14th
2600
Quadrun - Th 40 F 50 S 50 Sun 60 Mon7/19 60 Tu --- W 70 th [d] F 70 S 70 Sun - Mon 7/26 70 Tu 2000 Wed 100 Thu 6000 Fri - Sat 80 Sun 80 Mon - Tue - Wed 80
Arcade
Gyruss - Th 700 F 800 S 1000 Sun 1000 Mon7/19 1000 Tu 1000 W 1000 Th [d] F [d] S 1000 Sun - Mon 7/26 1000 Tu 20000 Wed x Thu 20000 Fri - Sat 2000 Sun 1000 Mon - 1000 Tue - Wed 1000
Intellivision
Hover Force - Th 30 F 40 S 50 Sun 50 Mon7/19 50 Tu 2000 W 60 Th [d] F [d] S 60 Sun - Mon 7/26 70 Tu 70 Wed 70 Thu 70 Fri - Sat 70 Sun 80 Mon 80 Tue - Wed 80
Intellivision
Tower of Doom - W7/21 6000 Th [d] F 100 S 100 Sun - Mon 7/26 100 Tu 100 Wed x Thu 100 Fri - Sat 200 Sun 10000 Mon 200 Tue 200 Wed 200
2600
Gravitar - w7/21 16 Th [d] F 40 S 1000 Sun -Mon 7/26 50 Tu 50 Wed x Thu x Fri - Sat 10000 Sun 70 Mon 70 Tue 70 Wed 70
Arc
Yie Ar Kung Fu - w7/21 1000 Th [d] F 400 S 500 Sun -Mon 7/26 600 Tu 600 Wed x Thu x Fri - Sat 800 Sun 800 Mon 2000 Tue 10000 Wed 900
---
2600
Decathalon Wed 100 Thu 100 Fri - Sat 100 Sun 800 Mon - Tue 200 Wed 200
Asteroids Wed 100 Thu 100 Fri - Sat 200 Sun - Mon 200 Tue - Wed 300
Frostbite Wed x Thu x Fri - Sat 200 Sun - Mon - Tue 1000 Wed 300
Arc
Jailbreak Wed 10000 Thu 500 Fri - Sat 700 Sun 800 Mon 1000 Tue - Wed 1000
Kaboom Mon7/19 - 300 400
posted by Chris at
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