BTM – coverage and sales week 03
Hi everybody!
What? Some long and boring sales recap again?
Yes, that’s it, we think that we will lower down the frequency of such articles, but this week we got some good stuff to show you, so why waiting?
>> Media coverage
On May 31th, Jeuxvideo.com (FR) (I think the most visited French videogames website) made a great review of Blocks That Matter:
“[on XBLIG], sometimes you find some gems that are truly worthwhile. Blocks That Matter is one of those.” 18/20
Kill Screen (EN) give a really cute review, pointing at game’s details that some players may not even be aware of.
“Blocks That Matter is less a love letter to game developers than it is a ransom note.” 69 (a so sexy rating!)
Game UK got some trouble to appreciate the ending of the game and some music tracks that were not nervous enough for their taste… but they loved the game anyway!
“Blocks That Matter is a stroke of genius, taking all the best aspects of several of the best “block” orientated games to creating something completely original.” 4/5
Silence, on joue ! (FR) a famous French podcast about videogames, talks about BTM for almost 5 minutes!
“BTM is simply an extremely well designed puzzle/reflection game, a little bit hard sometimes but enough to let you appreciate the reward of reaching your goals [..] A game made with love, references and a lot of respect for the games in general.”
Jeuxvideo.com (FR) (again!) released a ‘Gaming live’ about Block That Matter. WARNING: the video reveals some blocks that matter you will found in the chest scattered in the levels, take care to not spoil yourself if you don’t want to!
>> Sales
A little surprise was waiting us this week, let’s discover it through charts!
Here is the sales by country chart:
Yes! You’re not dreaming, the French sales overtook the US ones!
To understand why, here is the day by day detail using the “sales number / download number (conversion rate)” format:
– d15 (05/26/2011) : 26 / 124 (20.9%)
– d16 (05/27/2001) : 25 / 128 (19.5%)
– d17 (05/28/2011) : 27 / 169 (15.9%)
– d18 (05/29/2011) : 25 / 135 (18.5%)
– d19 (05/30/2011) : 19 / 138 (13.7%)
– d20 (05/31/2011) : 166 / 553 (30%)
– d21 (06/01/2011) : 270 / 655 (41.2%)
– d22 (06/02/2011) : 163 / 430 (37.9%)
– total : 721 / 2332 (30.9%)
– global : 1360 / 8059 (16.8%)
No need to be a genius to realize that this sudden burst in the sales is due to the ‘jeuxvideo.com’ review. We will see what happen for the sales in the next days, maybe (surely?) they will go back to their previous state!
Here is the chart that recap the sales/download history since the game was released:
The conversion rate is higher than it used to be (the red curve is “near” the blue one). You can see the impact of May 31th!
>> From the players side
Players continue to drop us lines to thank us (and we thank you back!). We got some mails wondering about the PC version, some people were thinking that it was already available and they were searching it all over the internet… but we are still working on it! We will try to target a release by the end of June.
This time, I don’t think I make a mistake by telling you that the next article will talk about the PC version progress!
We truly want to thank you for your messages, and for pointing us some stuff about BTM on the internet, because we definitely can’t detect all the stuff out there!
Hey! I almost forgot to say that we had the opportunity to send a mail to Alexey Pajitnov by the intermediate of our friends at MO5.com, a French organisation that helps preserve, explore and replay old (and sometimes not so old) videogames!
Now the two real life alter egos of ‘Markus’ and ‘Alexey’ are aware of Blocks That Matter! Thanks MO5!
See you next time!
Love!
William
Guillaume
Hi Ciro !
Thanks for your feedback on the utility of theses kinds of posts :]
If it can helps or comfort other (even one) XBLIG users (or Indies in general), then that will be awesome.
This week end post will be about the porting, but will also feature a little part on the updated graph of course.
As for the recap, maybe we will do this, when we will gather more infos.
See you!
I’m going back to my lady Java :]
Dude, posts about sales are not boring. They are useful for other indies, so keep them coming!
Actually, you could (some time from now) make a big recap of all the sales figures and spread it around the internet. It would be super useful!
Salut Jan!
On va essayer de sortir le jeu fin juin oui !
Pour le mac AppStore on y pense (tout comme le store de certaines dsitributions Linux comme Ubuntu), on vous dis quand on en sait plus 🙂
La version mac est toujours prévu pour ce mois-ci ? Ce sera dispo sur le Mac AppStore ? 🙂
Hi there, sorry for not answering for few days :] Quite busy. But Thanks for your sweat comments, all of you.
@Alain:
Haha, yep he did an outstanding work (even if 1 level could be broken depending your approach).
@lorancou:
Thanks for your support 🙂 And congratz from what I’ve seen in the E3 Ubisoft conference, and the trailer this morning. I think there’s some lorancou lines in there :]
@Michael:
You welcome! For the PS3 version, it’s gonna be complicated :]
@Nicolas:
For now, the Gaming Live have less repercussion than the review since the sales are decreasing again :]
@Fib:
You welcome, I wasn’t aware of your very cool devblog… but I will follow your projects! Cool stuff here.
It is great that you are so transparent about your sales figures and your development, I really appreciate it and I’m sure a lot of people do as well.
I’m happy to see that your sales have jumped so tremendously in the 3rd week, and I hope for an even greater increase in the coming weeks.
Again, thank you for your transparency.
This is great you got such a good mark at JV.com. Let’s hope the Gaming Live they made will help as well, people tend to watch these more often than they read the tests.
Looking forward the Linux version, I promise I’ll talk about you around me.
Congratulations !
Lol, well im hoping for a computer release soon lol (or maybe a ps3 release) 🙂 thanks for replying !
Good to see the chart is going up again, that’s good for your morale and the quality of the PC port, that’ll me a must-buy for me of course 🙂 With all the great reviews, you’ve got quite a good chance of success when you hit the PC market, so keep up the good work!
Finally took some time to reach 50% of the game. William, I really think you’ve made an amazing job with the level design of BTM. I’m thoroughly impressed so far and I’m quite sure it’s not over!
Hi Micheal!
This is totally our fault! The original trailer stated that the game will be released on Xbox in April, and the Pc version in May… but we experimented some troubles, mainly due to a fail for our first xbox peer review (here: http://bit.ly/kXaC6B) and for some “stairs trouble” on the place where we were working together (here: http://bit.ly/k3OTcR).
Since the raw video was on William computer… and that computer was still in the unaccessible apartment… then we let the video as it is today on the internet 🙁
William just got his computer back few days ago and moved to a new place (a new apartment) where there is still now electricity :] So we will make modification to the dates on this trailer soon.
During this time, I was working from my home, on my little house computer :]
Sorry to make you search over the internet!
It’s one thing that we have learned by making BTM: never make a trailer before the game is actually released :]… and do not live/work in a place where the stairs crumble 🙂
Sorry about posting twice, but i heard it was may for pc, mac and linux but i since haven’t been able to find it. 🙁
Hey just a quick question has blocks that matter been released for linux yet ?