Wool sales numbers: An underwhelming response. Please help!
It’s been almost two weeks since Wool came out, and we’d like to share our sales numbers with you:
* Trials: 6972
* Purchases: 620
* Purchase/Trial Ratio: 8.89 %
Maybe as a first impression they could look good if you’re not into sales numbers for XBLIG, but trust us, they aren’t. Remember Wool is sold at the price of one dollar, so the revenue that we get per copy is very low. We published the game at that price in order to get more people to try the game.
Now that Wool is out of any of the lists on the Xbox dashboard, sales have dropped significantly, being only 12 last day. To tell the truth, Little Racers has sold more units yesterday than Wool, despite it’s been more than 6 months since its appearance.
We’ve tried everything that’s in our hand (and keep trying) to promote the game, with little success. We truly think the game is worth well more than a single dollar.
The game is rated 3.25 stars, a very low value for the quality and fun level we think the game offers for just one dollar. We don’t know the reasons behind this awfully bad results, and that’s why we’re asking you, our fellow users.
Our intention from the beginning was to bring high quality gameplay and fun to the Xbox Live Indie games channel, but it seems we’ve done something terribly wrong. We’re always trying to improve, but we can’t learn from our mistakes if we don’t know what was the mistake.
We’d like everybody that read this and have rated low the game (3 stars or less) to put a comment and tell us why. We need complete sincerity so please be as harsh as you want.
I follow you guys on twitter, and saw the vidoes you have posted on youtube. I did not download the trial, nor rate this game. Just from the videos shown, it does not intrest me, and reminds me of a flash games that I could play on my PC for free. Granted, it is only $1, but still, I would not spend that money on a game that does not look interesting.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Milkstone Studios, Ben Sweeney. Ben Sweeney said: RT @milkstone: Wool Sales numbers: An underwhelming response. Please help http://tinyurl.com/yggn8vt […]
Kissy Poo has about the same results. I think we released at just about the same time. Your sales are actually a little bit higher, I think we just broke 400 today.
I think we suffer from cuteness actually. I think we have a place for a casual marketplace, but honestly I think the only people that go there are hardcore gamers. So games that appeal to that crowd do better. We (meaning your game and ours) has a much smaller market on the 360 and the hardcore gamers (who do a lot of rating) hit us hard on the rating because they say this sucks, I want to kill more Zombies!
In my opinion you’re doing about as well as you can with the smaller subset of casual gamers that exist. But we’re still hoping we just haven’t found the right marketing pitch yet… 🙂
Thanks both of you for your thoughts and impressions!
You’re probably right. We didn’t think the game would give such a bad first impression, only by the looks, to the average xbox gamer.
Hi Guys. I’m glad to hear that Little Racers is still selling. I like Wool and gave it a 4 star rating. Importantly it is very playable with accurate and responsive controls. You do not need to worry about the quality of your product.
Many of the most critically acclaimed games go unnoticed by the gaming masses and end up in the bargain bins. Ico, Psychonauts, Madworld..the list goes on and on. Last year Capcom (i think) closed Clover Studios who were responsible for high quality innovative titles, but their games simply didn’t sell. I believe that the majority of gamers (ie ‘casual gamers’) are really only interested in playing shooting, driving, sports and fighting games. They only want to replace their older games with newer ones from the same genres and won’t consider trying anything different. I believe that Wool is another victim of this type of thinking. People who only want to play MW2 won’t consider trying Wool because it is too abstract a concept for them. Unfortunately this will continue to be the fate for the majority of really good innovative games.
Wool is a really good game and I would advise you to stick to the principles of high quality and innovation. It may take time but you will gradually build up a loyal fan base who will stick with you. There is also a much greater chance that you will get noticed by larger compaines if you have a portfolio of high quality games. I will continue to recommed your games to people and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.
I’m totally surprised at the low trial to purchase results from Wool – I thought it was an excellent game, and definitely worth the 80MSP!
It might even be that the price is too low? You know, sometimes low price to some people would equal low quality – perhaps people are thinking that even though the trial is good, that there would be nothing more to the main game? I don’t know…
I know that Lighthouse Studios said that when they changed the price of Fireplace from 80 to 240 MSP sales increased vastly!
I’ll keep tweeting about how good it is – probably one of the best on Indie games in my opinion… hope the sales figures improve, but know that the people that have it think it’s great! 5/5 from me 🙂
Sometimes gamers just don’t find interest in a particular genre, no matter how well it is pulled off. You might have made the best sheep hearding game ever, but it’s still a sheep hearding game (neither a traditional or overly popular genre with many gamers).
Also to me (I have not played Wool), your game makes me think of Flock (the game where you heard sheep using a UFO). I didn’t really like that game and fair or not, that’s definately made me less likely to try similar games.
I hope sales pick up. I found that conversion rates increased a lot after the initial new release period though downloads decrease at the same time. If gamers really enjoy Wool, they’ll eventually spread the word and you’ll start seeing more and more people try (and buy) it.
Just to make things clear, our conversion rate is superb: About 25-30% this month and 10% since release. Way more than the one we got with Little Racers (6%). The problem is that the number of downloads is too low.