DUOtrix sales numbers
30 March 2009
Microsoft made the sales and download numbers for Xbox Live Community Games available a couple of days ago. The verdict? I’m not quitting my day job any time soon. *sigh*
So no, the sales numbers aren’t great, but they aren’t terrible either. Here’s the breakdown:
Total units 7595
Full units 157
Demo units 7438
This puts us at a 2.07% conversion rate. Not great, but I believe that’s around the average rate for downloadable games.
I think DUOtrix quickly got lost in the flood of games on XBCG. We were on the “featured 5″ list on the Community Games page at launch, which is where most of the traffic came from. When we were pulled off the list in December the downloads slowed down dramatically. Looking at the graphs below (especially the Demo Downloads graph) confirms this.
This is an issue that will hurt all of the quality games on XBCG. As I’ve said before a user rating system is essential for highlighting the great games on XBCG. We’ve mostly received positive reviews for DUOtrix, but it doesn’t make much of a difference because it quickly got buried by newer games, regardless of their quality. The issues of visibility and shelf space that plagues retail is just as prevalent here. What’s frustrating is that it’s very easily avoidable in the downloadable space.
Overall: disappointed, but I’m far too much of an optimist to linger on this for long. There are still plenty of videogames I need to make! 
It looks like being on the XBLCG page only got you 5 sales/day, and it was probably more like 3 sales/day as you continued to do 2 sales/day after being pulled down. That is basically nothing at all. Gamers obviously did not buy many games from looking at that page. At least not back then.
Interesting stuff.
Pity that the graphs they gave you are “cumulative” though.
Is it possible to get standard “units per day” graphs instead?
Cumulative graphs are just a bit unintuitive to read.
@Matthew:
I dunno … looking at the demo downloads graph it’s fairly obvious that most of the downloads happened during Nov 08. I guess the sales graph isn’t quite as dramatic, but I think the point (xna games lack visibility) is still true.
@Mr. Staypuft:
I might do more graphs later on … you can never have too many pretty graphs! 
The graphs were initially units per day, but I actually thought cumulative was easier to read.
Great bit of info thanks for sharing
D
Very unfortunate, but the simple reality is that there are *so many* games (and other stuff) coming out on XNA that I’ve resorted to just looking at the new arrivals only. If I miss a few days, any title that appeared quickly gets lost.
Community Games NEEDS a rating system *and* some kind of search. Microsoft, if you are reading this, please spend some time on Amazon.com to see how their system works. Not only can you search for all kinds of things, but they even email you recommendations based on what you’ve looked at. A message on you live account saying “we noticed you played this, you might like this” would go a long way…
Hey, your game was okay but the problem is that their is no achievements. Why pay for game that I can probably find close to on newgrounds.com. Not your problem really but Microsoft needs to add this, guarantee it will get more games sold. just my 2 cents!