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180 for iPhone - Not much to report on 180 lately. We've got the Free Version available once again, for about a week now. We had taken it down for nearly a month, at which point it was getting @50 DLs a day. In the week since its return it gets about half of that. Our sales of the Full seem to not have been affected at all (if anything, steady decline). I am of the mind that the Free is probably enough of a "Full Experience" for a large number of people, based on certain feedback, but I'd rather leave it out there for the possibility of upsell, than leave only the Full with no movement whatsoever.
I went to Siggraph here in Los Angeles this past week, hoping to schmooze a bit and handout material. The convention was fairly lackluster (not disinteresting if you could get into some panels, but definitely not the beehive of activity that it once was!) Happily I was able to distrubute nearly all of the rest of my leftover swag from last Month's E3 convention (was it even a month ago, I am having a hard time keeping track!) People were much more receptive to it than at the recent Anime Expo ("Free what?") Seriously, everyone at Siggraph was sporting iPhones..
I also headed out to a Best Buy early in the week, hoping to hit up some of the StaCraft2 Launch crowd. I'd been to midnight launches before, some of them have been fairly crazy events. Maybe it was a sign of the times, maybe it's because the game can be downloaded online, but at the BB in West Hollywood, there were barely 20 people present. Although I handed out only maybe 3 flyers, the night wasn't a total wash (grabbed a couple beers with my buddies!)
Also attended the X Games late in the week (yeah... it was sort of a busy week!) but the plans got messed up and didn't really distribute much material, still I managed to slap a couple of stickers in there. Up next weekend is the Tetris World Championships, I have no idea what to expect (probably going to be light attendance!) but I think my game would be particularly well-suited to tat crowd, so I will stick my head in and see what's cooking. And of course at PAX in Seattle in exactly one month, I am scheduled to speak on on independent game developer panel, which should help get Headcase a little press for our game!
What Else is Going On - As you can tell by reading above it has been quite busy around here. I try to tie as many of my social activities as I can into unraveling the secrets to guerilla marketing (no easy task!), although I spend the majority of my hours here behind the desk. Development of App Updates are fairly stalled at this point, as I've been wrapped up in other more lucrative business. Likewise I am helping another programmer wrap-up his own iPhone app, and it is my intention to make it through this week with as much of that finished as possible (it'll be a lot of work, but I am very behind in supporting him as I've been so busy with my own stuff). Right now we are nearly at the 1-year anniversary of our initial appstore release (iFist) which is pretty nuts to consider!
Incidentally, I have a couple of other game ideas brewing fresh in my head and hopeful to spec them out at some point soon, though sadly I doubt any of them will see any actual development work anytime soon. You never know, though!
An important note, I am looking into talking with some folks who have connections with the publishing world (like, you know, actual books!) If anyone out there has a link, please drop me a line, that would be very helpful.
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