So naturally I uploaded a set of 920×640 images for screenshots. So far so good. All looks well on the ITC website, even though it gives fewer suggested formats for the images:

Yesterday I noticed a tweet and email messages from Bob Estes ( @onscrn ) stating that there was a problem with the hi-dpi screenshots. Further investigation and another tweet from David Frampton ( @majicdave ) led to the conclusion that the hi-dpi screenshots do not show up on devices not running iOS 3.2 and above. In other words, they show up on iPad and any device running iOS 4.x. What do you see on devices running iOS 3.1.x or earlier? Well, nothing. It seems the App Store application itself doesn’t know how to display the higher resolution images, and it skips the screenshots entirely (left from iOS 3.1.2, right from iOS 4.0.2):

That’s definitely not good. So, what are developers to do? If you can’t use the hi-dpi images in screenshots and have them work on all devices, how can you include standard images that don’t look crappy on the Retina Display? I brought this up at last night’s CocoaHeads meeting here in Colorado Springs. Most folks were unaware of the issue so I persisted a bit and Jeff Schmoyer came up a solution: Include one image at standard resolution and the others at high resolution. That way users on devices with iOS 3.1.x could see at least one image and all other users would see all the images. You could even add a caption to the one image so that it explained that the other screenshots were available on iOS 3.2 and above (I didn’t do that, though).

So I updated my images, as Jeff suggested, since my app is still waiting for review. I still don’t know exactly how everything will look once it is live on the App Store. Of course, those of you with existing apps are in the unfortunate position of being unable to modify the screenshots until you upload a new binary. Or, as David Frampton puts it: “What’s new in this version: Inferior screenshots to work around bug in App Store. 62.8MB.”

I’ve contacted Apple about this but haven’t heard back yet. I will update this post when I know more.

Update:This problem has apparently been solved. My application was approved on August 19th, and all five images did show up on both iOS 3.x and 4.x. However, Bob Estes reports that Apple corrected the issue on the App Store, and indeed I can see all the Chopper 2 screenshots now.

In a short couple of weeks the App Store turns two. There will undoubtedly be big celebrations in Cupertino and elsewhere as Apple trumpets the latest milestone of its success. Here at Mundue headquarters it’s time to look back and reflect on the first two years of the App Store. Let’s start with the big news first.

A Cool 7 Million

Sometime on June 17th we passed 7,000,000 downloads for all our apps. The majority are from our reMovem games, and most of those are free downloads. Nevertheless some of our lesser known games like iKeno and inFact World are selling a decent amount each month as well.  A little while back when I realized the upcoming milestone I calculated it would occur around July 7th. Celebrating 7 million on 7/7 sounded like a great idea, and it’s close to the App Store’s actual birthday of 7/11/08. In the meantime we decided to put reMovem up on the FreeAppADay promotion site on May 4th. This resulted in an extra 96,000 downloads which sort of accelerated things a bit.

iPad Heats Things Up

Earlier this year the reMovem lineup received a major addition with the introduction of reMovem 2 for iPad. While the gameplay is familiar, the larger board and extra features have helped to pave the way for more changes in the iPhone versions. Little things like unlimited undo, theme support, and better graphics are making their way into reMovem and reMovem free with the most recent updates. The iPad is a fantastic device to use and develop for, and I can honestly say it made our extended roadtrip in May much more memorable.

Ad Revenue Spins Up

Along with the upcoming iOS4 comes iAd. Everyone is talking about iAd now. In early 2009 we put a few banner ads in reMovem free. With millions of users and dozens of updates it seemed reasonable to try to earn a little bit along the way. Because I was still working at a medical software company, I hadn’t quite reached the point where I could take the plunge as a full-time indie developer. At the time I calculated that ad revenue could eventually exceed paid app sales. There were many bumps along the road, including some bad blood between AdWhirl/AdMob and others, but eventually we ended up with ads in all our free apps and the revenue started to add up. Late last year Google began testing AdSense for iPhone and that has been a major win for us, exceeeding all other ad networks in every way. Still, with iAd on the horizon… it’s certainly worth a look.

Look Beyond Our Borders

Translation has been such a big win for reMovem, I can’t stress that fact enough. Nearly 3 million downloads of all versions of reMovem have come from outside of the U.S. It took a few months to finish the process, but we ended up with 13 languages and some months more than 50% of the downloads come from overseas. It’s a bit of a pain to manage the updates and merging changes, but well worth the effort. For those who read the earlier post about number of games played, Pinch metrics showed 1.78 billion new games, before they shut their reporting service off. [Pinch was acquired and rolled into Flurry's service.]

What’s Next?

We’ve got some short-term updates for iOS 4 and iPhone 4 compatibility, then a round of sweeping changes for the reMovem products. Having just returned from Apple’s WWDC, it’s apparent there is a long list of good things on the horizon that we need to prepare for. Of course there are a couple of top-secret projects that we’re also working on. Looks like we’re in for a long hot summer, time to head for the mountains to cool off.

At the recent iPadDevCamp in Colorado Springs I gave a short talk about making money on the App Store. In it I revealed a few numbers about one of our holiday games, reMovem Christmas Edition for the iPhone. This was not central to the theme of the talk, but merely to illustrate a point I was making. Other developers seem to like hearing about this stuff, so I thought I’d summarize it in a blog post.

We created reMovem Christmas Edition as a follow-up to the Halloween version, which had a limited run from September to early November last year. The Halloween version had around 14,000 downloads, but was removed from the store to make way for the Christmas version. Both versions are free and use AdMob for in-app mobile advertising. They are very similar to the basic version of reMovem free, with the addition of AGON Online support for leaderboards, and are only available in English.

Because of the unexpected popularity of reMovem Christmas (downloaded about 28,000 times to date) we decided to keep it available on the App Store. It continues to be downloaded about a hundred times a day. Perhaps the Halloween version would still be doing as well, but we’ll never know at this point.

Figure 1 shows the initial surge of downloads just before and around Christmas. Note the typical trail off, but it seems to level at about 100/day for the last two months.

Now compare that to Figure 2, which shows the AdMob revenue for the same period. The same initial surge and fall, then a leveling. If you look closely, the revenue is actually increasing as of late.

This is not due to more downloads or more usage, however. Yes there are more cumulative users, but the number of requests is slowly going down as expected, as seen in Figure 3.

What’s making the difference, then? It turns out we are benefitting from both a higher CTR (clickthrough rate) and eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions). Note first the increased CTR, which I fully attribute to “better” ads being served by AdMob. Part of this is seasonal, I’m sure, but there’s no secret or keywords or click-baiting going on. The app and the mechanism by which it requests ads has not changed since the November 19th release.

No matter what the cause, the bottom line is that revenue, as measured by eCPM, has gone up slightly. This means we’ll probably keep reMovem Christmas Edition available for the foreseeable future. Here’s what that increased eCPM looks like:

So when you add up all the numbers, reMovem Christmas Edition has ‘sold’ about 28,000 copies, had just under 900,000 ad impressions, and earned us $585. The averages are actually a little higher than that of reMovem free, but I feel like the relatively smaller numbers favor higher results. Once you start to range into the 100s of thousands of impressions your overall CTR and eCPM is probably not going to be as high. And as always, each app’s implementation and appeal to users will vary widely.

Do we consider this a success? Well, yes and no. Financially it’s not making much for us. Adoption rate of the AGON Online service is a little less than 10% and that’s a disappointment. I’m very curious to know what other developers are seeing for competing systems like OpenFeint and Scoreloop and Plus+. On the other hand, the continued success in terms of daily downloads is great, and we enjoy knowing that a seasonal freebie app can be sold any time of the year. As a result, our new iPad only version of reMovem 2 (iTunes link) has downloadable themes, including the holiday versions. I hope to have more new themes available soon.

I hope all this illustrates that ad-supported holiday apps can be good for your business, but it really depends on your goals and expectations.

Our new iPad app reMovem 2 is approved for sale and will be included in the grand opening on Saturday April 3, 2010. This is a major revision of the existing iPhone versions, and it really wraps all of them into a single new game. Even though reMovem 2 is an iPad-only app, expect some features to make their way back to the iPhone versions of reMovem.

Ever since the iPad was officially announced we’ve wanted to create a supersized version of reMovem, and this is the end result. It’s got a slew of new features designed to take advantage of the bigger screen and advanced capabilities of the latest iPhone OS.

For a complete list of new features and some full-size screen shots, check out reMovem2.com. And soon it should be available on the iTunes App Store.

Here’s an earlier trailer that shows some of the new features in action (no sound):

I received a number of responses: some from folks I know personally, some I’ve talked with on Twitter, and others I never met before. I’ve got to say it’s my pleasure to connect with this great group, and the positive feedback has been encouraging. We’re already discussing additional ways in which we can work together in the future, to help promote each others’ apps.

The ads will continue to run until New years Day, hopefully the extra exposure will help boost each app, at least a little bit. Here’s a complete list on the apps included in the promotion, in no particular order. I’m sure most readers will be familiar with a few of these apps, but a few of them are brand-spanking new, so be sure to check them all out. My thanks to all who participated.

	Aqua Globs from Qwiboo.
	Arcade Solitaire: TriTowers from Endloop Systems.
	Passadoodle from postmechanical.
	TanZen from Little White Bear Studios.
	Labor Mate from White Peak Software.
	Monkeys in Space: Escape to Banana Base Alpha from Streaming Colour Studios.
	Similis Deluxe from J2Ke.
	Flower Garden Free from Snappy Touch.
	Animal Sound Chase Free from Windmill Apps.
	Snaked from Broken Thumbs Apps.
	Green Fingers from No Monkeys.
	Chopper from Majic Jungle Software.
	SpringFling from GTProductions.
	Tourneys from BigSprocket.
	Story Tracker from Andrew Nicolle.
	Downhill Bowling from GameResort.
	Sword of Fargoal from Fargoal.
	Listmaker from Daze End Software.
	Rocket Santa from Christopher Waite.
	Payload from Prop Group.
	Tweeps from ACME.
	BeerMap from Matthew Galloway.
	Serving Sizer recipe converter from Creative Algorithms.
	Compression from Little White Bear Studios.
	Touch and Play from Anthropohedron.
	Face Race from We Heart Games.
	Similis Plus from J2Ke.
	Eyegore’s Eye Blast from RetroDreamer (Clickgamer).
	Sneezies from RetroDreamer (Chillingo).

I’m not quitting iPhone development. I’m one of the many thousands of developers that you rarely hear about. We work on the iPhone platform because it is awesome and cool and offers an amazing opportunity. We hate the Apple approval process just as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day developing for the iPhone far outweighs the hassles.

Being an iPhone developer is a voluntary process. Yes it’s frustrating working within the Apple system. I have no inside connections, no guardian angels, no-one to champion my cause. My rejections have come at the worst times, and I never received an expedited approval to correct my mistakes. I applied for the program, downloaded the SDK, and took my chances just like everyone else. Publishing is relatively easy, success fleeting and limited.

Still, I’m not holding my breath for Apple to change. There’s too much work to be done!

I haven’t attempted to exceed this, but the 255 character limit on your application’s name is possibly also 255 bytes. Likewise, the application description is probably 4000 bytes instead of the documented 4000 characters.

Keep it mind when planning your localization, especially if you are getting estimates for the translation of your application’s descriptions and keywords. Hopefully you won’t have to pay for something that you can’t even use.

Update: Kirby’s comments remind me that this problem is only apparent after you update the application. If you merely add the description and keywords when appending a new language translation, you won’t see the problem. That is to say, you’ll think the keywords were accepted, but they are probably truncated if more than 100 bytes.

One billion games of reMovem free played. There, I’ve said it.

I must start by noting that reMovem has had a good life so far. In the fifteen or so months since its release we’ve created 21 versions and updated them to iTunes Connect. That’s 11 for the free version and 10 for the paid version. This alone makes me an expert, or at least experienced, in the App Store process that is much discussed these days.

As far as iPhone casual games go, reMovem is a modest success. The paid version was never ranked #1, and it hasn’t made me rich. Here at Mundue we measure success in other ways. For example, there was the larger-than-life reMovem icon in the middle of the gigantic iPhone app displays in all the US Apple stores last winter. The first time I saw this I did a double-take. This was in a suburban Boston mall store. Apparently it was everywhere, as I’ve personally seen it in North Carolina, Las Vegas, and elsewhere. Of course, trying to get the store manager to save a copy of the icon display for me was another story.

Being mentioned by Apple in the top free games for 2008 on the iTunes App Store didn’t hurt either. This kind of promotion, which can’t be bought, led to a spike in sales of reMovem free right around Christmas time. With several million new iPod touches in the hands of happy holiday recipients, being on that list helped keep reMovem free in the top #100 for a few more months.

If you read our reMovem blog you’ll see we debated over features, localization, high score systems, and other ways to improve the free and paid versions. To help provide more insight into how the games were being played we added analytics in January to both versions. I investigated a few of the options, specifically Pinch Media, Medialets, Mobclix, and AppLoop. AppLoop actually looked very promising, but went silent and closed shop just before I made a decision.

I implemented the analytics code in such a way that we could quickly add and remove new providers. This also let us compare (verify) the results of one set of metrics with a different one. Over time I began to favor Pinch – their support has been excellent, and the web dashboard is still superior to many of the Flash-based alternatives. Recently I’ve also begun to use Flurry, which provides a slightly different approach to the data. As it is now, adding or deleting a new analytics package is not that difficult, though it does require an update to the code.

The metrics reported are fascinating. If you were at Greg Yardley’s talk at 360iDev in Denver recently, or have read any of the numerous reports from AdMob, AdWhirl, Pinch, Medialets, Flurry, etc., you’ll understand how the bigger picture of downloads versus user retention works. On a smaller scale, we are more interested in what users are doing inside the game, what works, what doesn’t, and so on. Features that are rarely used can be targeted for removal, modes that get played often can be examined for possible refinement.

A startling pattern emerged for reMovem and reMovem free. Users were playing more games, and for longer periods of time, than what was generally considered average for a casual game. For example, since January, the average user of reMovem free plays 2.1 sessions per day, for an average total time of over 30 minutes! Total time spent in reMovem free, since we started tracking in January, is over 2,700 years. This does not include any of the time played for all of 2008, when it was on the top #10 list for free games.

As 2009 starts to wind down (or up, if you consider the coming holiday season), we’ve reached an incredible milestone. In the 2,700 years of cumulative play, users have recorded 1,000,000,000 new games. According to our Pinch Media analytics it happened sometime in the early hours of October 9th. Given that we’re not counting any of the games played in 2008, it seems safe to say that this milestone was actually reached some months ago. Then again, some users press New Game before completing a game, so it probably evens out.

In appreciation for reaching this milestone, we’re putting all of our games at US$ 0.99. To all the friends, fans, and supporters of reMovem, we say “Thanks a billion!”

Part 3

In my previous post I wrote about the run-up to reMovem‘s week at the top of the App Store chart. On August 2, 2008, reMovem (then called JawBreaker) reached the number 1 free app on the US iTunes Store. It stayed there for a solid week, during which time it was downloaded several hundred thousand times. It was a busy week!

We promised to keep our app free forever. At the time, there was quite a bit of a fuss about all the top free apps “flipping” to paid to make a quick profit. All of the negative comments at the time reflected a widespread feeling that this practice was deceptive. The sudden appearance of a paid app in the number 1 spot might in fact lead people to download it, simply because it appeared to be popular. The rankings manipulation arguments continue to this day, but the price-flipping brouhaha seems to have largely faded away. These days, flipping can even be seen in a positive light, as in the recent case of the Fling app. We decided to make separate free and paid versions, with added modes and features to differentiate the paid version. We kept our promise.

Hundreds of user reviews started flowing in, both good and bad. Back then users could post reviews and star ratings without having to download an application. This led to a host of silly comments (since removed by Apple) like:

First!

Looks good, but I’m probably not gonna download it

Try Aurora Feint instead

Bet they’re going to flip it to paid now, just like all the others

Also a few good comments:

One of the coolest games ever!

Don’t be fooled…. this game is far deeper than what meets the eye

Wow! THANK YOU for a great and simple game to help me pass the time

Great! Close to perfect!

I haven’t enjoyed a game like this since Bejewled

You need to, or rather ought to get a bonus for clearing all of the bubbles

We completed the paid version of reMovem during this week. To avoid potential trademark issues we changed the name from JawBreaker to reMovem. Actually the name ‘reMovem’ was not a first choice. Many names were considered: Accrue, Addictive, AquaDots, Bottlecaps, Buster, Clusters, Convergence, Dispatch!, Monty, and Planets were also on the list. An unfortunate association with the recalled Bindeez toy doomed the name AquaDots from the start. All the other names were either unavailable or just didn’t seem right. Thus the autological reMovem, which sounds like what you do to the balls in the game (you remove ‘em).

Another noteworthy occurrence that week was the inauguration of our translation effort. It started with an email inquiry from Luc Janssen in the Netherlands, offering to do a Dutch translation of the game. Apparently reMovem already had a great deal of fans outside of the US. We decided to try a Dutch translation, with Luc’s help, and see if it warranted expansion to other languages. Fortunately we here at Mundue had localization experience so this was not a particularly daunting task. Actually, translating an iPhone app is no different than translating a Mac application. Apple’s done a good job of leveraging existing tools and workflows. [This experiment panned out: fast forward a few weeks and reMovem sales in the Netherlands and Belgium (combined) were outpacing all other larger European countries.]

By the end of that week at the top, on August 9, 2008, we had renamed the app to reMovem, begun translating to Dutch, and submitted a separate paid version. We also started work on more features that would end up in reMovem free shortly, like a board clearing bonus, colorblind modes, and high scores. Within the next few days the paid version was approved, and another chapter of exciting challenges began.