The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2010. That’s about 4 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 8 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 21 posts. There were 11 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was April 21st with 60 views. The most popular post that day was 4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were yipesoftware.com, iphone5g.net, facebook.com, forums.toucharcade.com, and who-will-win-fifa-worldcup-2010.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for ipad rpg, yipe 5 ned, yipe 5 secrets, yipe apple mac, and yipe 5 final boss.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

4.5 Months in: Yipe! Sales Report April 2010
4 comments

iPad RPG screenshots! April 2010
1 comment

Yipe 5 Version 1.2 submitted to Apple January 2010
1 comment

Yipe! 5 FREE Lite version available! March 2010

99 cent sale, Danger! Dodgeball, Anything coming? July 2010
4 comments

So, a friend who was in the computer science program at Chico State just released an iPhone game with some of his buddies.  It’s got a catchy addictiveness to it and so I thought I’d give him a shout out.  Check out Danger! Dodgeball at the Robot Stampede site: http://www.robotstampede.com/

And as for updates on Yipe! 5 itself…

I have honestly been checked out the last few months from the world of Yipe!  Luckily, the world of Yipe! doesn’t need me to personally save it on a daily basis.  And there are still players out there trying out the game for the first time and enjoying it.  Like this comment on the App Store from yesterday:

“Bought it thinking I’d play here and there.  Ended up not being able to put it down.”  -r.richter, July 8, 2010

Always good to read those comments!

My update on actual development progress for Yipe! is:  Purchased an iPad and started on a version that was better suited for the iPad.  Put larger graphics in that Dylan gave me to make everything look crisp and clear on the iPad.  Realized the larger size graphics slowed down performance on the iPhone version.  So, now I was sort of in a state of not being able to do a release.  And then things sat for a bit.  A couple weeks ago, I optimized the memory usage so the large size images wouldn’t slow things down.  And started playing with Plus+ integration again.  And well, that’s where we are.  I think the games in a state I could do a release again, so if I can finish up Plus+, I’ll get something out.  No idea on timeline though.

The free lite version went out March 10th, 2010.

In the 4.5 months since that first version went out, I thought I’d share some stats on how things went with sales, downloads, updates, in-app purchases, etc.

Let’s start out with the totals.  I download the “weekly top 50″ report from iTunes Connect every Monday and put it into a little excel sheet I have.  Here’s the summary details:

Ok, let’s break this down a bit.

The game is typically priced at $1.99  in the app store.  I’ve put it on sale for 99 cents a couple of times and sales definitely go up when that happens, more on that later.  My “In App Purchases” are always 99 cents.  They represent the in app purchases I have in the game for “Unlock additional Save Slots” and “Add 10 pack of heals”.  The “In-App Unlock Game” row for the LITE version has been a $1.99 purchase up to this point and that unlocks the entire game, just as if you had bought the full version.

Of those purchase prices, I receive 70% and Apple takes the other 30%.  The numbers in the charts above represent my share, after Apple has already taken their cut.

Notice the Apple Payouts section.  Apple pays out on a monthly basis if you have received $150 USD value for any given currency.  So far, I have only reached this twice, Dec 2009 for USD sales and Jan 2010 for USD sales.  For AUD, GBP, EUR, CAN, JPY, I have not been paid anything from Apple for my sales since I have not yet reached $150 in total approximate sales.  I went over $150 for March USD, but have not actually received the payout from Apple yet.

It looks like I actually am there for EUR now.  $161.92 total over 4.5 months.  So, hopefully as April comes to a close, I should receive a payout for those sales.

I have heard on discussion boards that Apple will eventually pay you out, even if you do not receive $150 in total sales for a given currency.  I’m just not sure when this happens.

Price changes and Updates.  What increase do I receive?  Here’s a weekly progress report with info on what (if anything) happened each week.  Weeks are based on Apple’s weekly reports and cover the period of Monday through Sunday each week.  These sales totals are specific to the full version and do not count in-app purchases or downloads of lite version.

Week 1: 98 total sales (Dec 5, 6)  First 2 days of being in the app store.  Ahhh, these were the glory days.  Made it up to top 55 in RPG category.
Week 2: 151 (Dec 7-13)  Things started going down after day 4 as the drop in sales was noticeable.   Days 5 and 6 had 13 total sales each and I dropped down to 90 in top paid RPG category.  After this I was out of the top 100 until…
Week 3: 160 (Dec 14-20) Version 1.1 was released on Dec 16th.  This got TouchArcade.com members talking again and that definitely helped sales.  The day before, Dec 15th, I actually cracked the top 100 again as 26 sales put me at 87th in top 100 RPG category.  One thing the update did was allow 3.0 OS users to download the game.  The original release only allowed 3.1 or higher OS iPhones to download the game.  This however was not a major factor in increasing sales.  From my stats on PinchMedia.com, about 2% of my downloads over all time have been from iPhone users with an OS Version below 3.1.
Week 4: 150 (Dec 21-27)  On Dec 23rd, SlideToPlay.com did a review of the game.  Sadly it received only 2/4 stars, but the review was actually fairly positive.
Week 5: 139 (Dec 28 – Jan 3)
Week 6: 137 (Jan 4-10) 148Apps review of Yipe went out.  4/5 stars.
Week 7: 69 (Jan  11-17)
Week 8: 39 (Jan 18-24)
Week 9: 39 (Jan 25-31) On Jan 29th, 1.2 version was released which had lots of major changes.  I posted about those here: 1.2 Yipe changes.
Week 10: 148 (Feb 1-7) On Feb 2nd, price was reduced to $0.99.
Week 11: 27 (Feb 8-14) Raised price back up to $1.99 on Feb 8th.
Week 12: 19 (Feb 15-21)
Week 13: 20 (Feb 22-28)
Week 14: 21 (Mar 1-7) Review of Yipe on TouchMyApps was on March 2nd.
Week 15: 48 (Mar 8-14) March 10th, lite version was released.
Week 16: 37 (Mar 15-21) March 12th was official release party in SF.  March 16th, good review from SarcasticGamer.com. For the stats period ending March 21st, the lite version had a total of 919 installs and 39 of those purchased the in-app purchase to unlock the full game.  March 21st, I started an ad on 148apps.com.  The ad will run for 30 days.
Week 17: 73 (Mar 22-28)  On March 26th, price was reduced to $0.99.
Week 18: 56 (Mar 29 – Apr 4)  On April 2nd, price was raised back up to $1.99.
Week 19: 30 (Apr 5-11)
Week 20: 19 (Apr 12-18)
Week 21: ?? (Apr 19-18)  Just putting this uncompleted week here to note that my ad on BuySellAds.com expires on the 19th.  The ad was displaying on 148apps.com.  Results are in for the 30 day ad run:  42,796 impressions, 100 clicks, 0.23% click through rate, $0.02 ECPM.  The ad directed people to the Yipe! 5 site, http://www.yipe5.com.  Here’s a link to the Yipe! ad displaying on the site.  Here’s the actual full animated Yipe! ad.

Lastly, I will leave you with some links to my analytical data on PinchMedia.

Pic 1:  Dashboard.  Shows total unique users according to PinchMedia.  The Jailbroken users could be either paying or cracked version users.  No way to tell.

Pic 2: More Dashboard info.  Breaks down the Device type, OS Version and Application version.

Pic 3: Number of sessions per unique user over the lifetime of Yipe! 5 (full version).  Most people only open up the game 5-9 times, but there are still plenty of people who have opened the game up even more.  I wonder who the 500+ user is?

Pic 4: Session Durations.  Every time someone opens the game, how long do they keep it open, before closing the application?  I like this chart a lot because it shows that Yipe users typically stay within the application a fairly long time.  Most users keep the app open from 2-10 minutes and a significant amount of sessions last over 10 minutes.

Pic 5: Using PinchMedia, I can track specific occurrences in the game.  I set the game up to let me know when users hit certain levels, beat the first boss monster, finish the game and start new characters of a specific type.  Keep in mind that a single user could have started more than 1 character, so these are not unique user numbers.  I also didn’t add the tracking for new chars, bunny boss or NED levels until version 1.2, which explains why the numbers are so off for level 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, which were all in place from day 1, as was “Finished”.

Pic 6: As I looked at Pic 5, I realized the lifetime data here isn’t as meaningful, since I didn’t record everything from day 1.  For the lite version I did record everything from day 1, so here are the stats for the lite version.  Keep in mind that a player can only reach level 8 in the “trial” part of the lite version.  You must use the  “unlock game” in-app purchase to advance past level 8, get to the NED cave, finish the game, etc.  Total unique users who have unlocked the full lite version: 76.

Well, that’s my 4.5 month report!

The party was definitely awesome!  As is my cool new Yipe! t-shirt!  May have some extras to put up somewhere soon…

Here’s the itunes link:  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yipe-5-lite-rpg-attack-idle/id352289075?mt=8#

To all Yipe! loyal fans, I still encourage you to download the free one if you already have the full version!  It will help me get more attention to the app!

Oh… and don’t forget the SF release party!  Two days away!

Big thanks for a few friends at work for helping me update the entire Yipe! website.  You can probably tell I did the setup on the layout for the blog, as that doesn’t look nearly as nice as the actual new yipesoftware.com website itself.

In other news… Apple denied my first submission of the FREE version of Yipe 5.  Dylan and I used the word “Demo” on the icon and graphics for the game and apparently you can’t release “demo’s” to the App store.  Not exactly sure what the difference is between a lite version and a demo version… but… ummm… whatever.

So, Yipe 5 – Lite RPG – Attack of Idle Hands is now updated to only use the words “lite” and “free” and we’re back to waiting for approval.  Hopefully we’ll get it approved before next weeks official Yipe! release party!  Haven’t heard about the release party?  Check out the Facebook Yipe Release Party Event page here.

Version 1.2
Major changes:
New Dungeon! Can you find the treasure at the end? Or does it end?
User can now move the controls (d-pad) to the left side of screen.

(Controls Screen Shot)

A few new secrets added around the world.
New Progress Bar to see progress towards exp needed to advance to next level.
New heal item you can find, Mushroom Spores, from… well… Wild Mushrooms, of course.
New Quest from Puff’s hut.

UI and content changes:
New option for controls so you can see basic player stats displayed in controls area.
A number of new/different messages around the world and from the King’s Castle.
All moving monsters now have an alternate image to show movement.
All monster and player images should show up clearer in combat screen now.
We use monster name in combat in some places now instead of generic terms.
Added an extra screen in final credits, along with some info on secrets you missed.
Cleaned up quests screen a bit.
Don’t display “close” button in Puff’s hut if there is a special message from Puff.
Four new sounds. Find cool item, minor injury, water hole drinking, boulder moving.
Yipe News page extra: New elf character icon that you can find in new player creation.
Yipe News page extra: New tombstone in Hell that will taunt you. (More to come in Yipe Hell in future versions)

Balance:
Lowered the cost of a few of the heal items in the heal shops around the world.
Some final monsters now will drop a weapon or armor item when you kill them.
Magic Shield healing slightly reduced.
Special abilities don’t work quite as well versus final monsters, especially Idle Hands.
Player level plays a slightly lower factor on special skills after level 15.
Higher level monsters will not appear on surface until you discover them.

Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug with character creation if you used “back” button. Attributes would end up incorrect.
Fixed bug with backpack quest becoming uncompleted. This is repaired in Puff’s hut if it happened to your character.
Fixed display issue in combat text if you tried to select the text.
Link to Idle Hands Toy page fixed.
Fixed spot in fire cave where you could end up on top of lava.
Footsteps play properly on sandy roads now.
A few typos fixed.

Other:
Settings/Preferences now save to device from within app.

App Store Link