What you need to remember about digital distribution platforms

Screenshot of iTunes app of the week promotion

We get asked quite a few questions from indie developers, and try to do our best to answer them all. One we seem to get asked a lot  is what we think about different platforms. “Should I put my game on iOS, XBLA, Android, PC..? What would be best for sales?”

It’s certainly a reasonable question. Development factors aside, there can indeed be a large difference between platforms. Perhaps the most obvious of these are the number of users (potential customers), the number of games already there (potential competitors) and the platform’s growth prospects (be a big fish before the pond gets big). Kept to this level, its an important question to address and one that should be addressed on a case-by-case basis. The problem, however, comes when game makers rely on their platform to do their advertising for them.

Promoting indie games is something that some of the big digital distributers do very badly. For example, the iTunes app store is notoriously bad for helping users to find new great games, and (at the time of writing) the most recent Xbox Live dashboard update has pushed indie games further away from the average gamer’s attention. It is important to not think of these digital platforms as anything more than distributors for your game. Don’t expect them to do your marketing and advertising for you. Their role in your business is to simply enable people to acquire your game.

Of course, this isn’t to say that many game makers haven’t benefitted from a distributer’s promotions. iTunes do ‘apps of the week’, Microsoft do the ‘Summer of Arcade’ and other things. You might get lucky and get in a featured list, but this should only be viewed as a bonus and certainly not to be relied upon in your marketing plan.

In summary, it’s wise to consider which platforms will be best for your game(s), but make sure that you don’t have unrealistic expectations of how much that company is going to promote you. If you don’t handle your own marketing you run the big risk of getting lost in the crowd.