Flight Control Sales Numbers

29 April 2009 42 comments

When we launched Flight Control on 6 March 2009, we made a committment to share our sales numbers with the game development community. At the time we had no idea that Flight Control would reach the #1 paid app position in so many different countries, and just how interesting these numbers would be! We’ve decided to go into more detail than we originally envisioned, and have put together a report detailing Flight Control sales between 24 March and 25 April 2009. This covers the period for which Flight Control held the #1 position in the USA.

Included in the 16 page report:

  • Sales during the report period: 587,485
  • Sales to date (6 March to 27 April): over 700,000
  • Graph of global sales per day
  • Total sales per country (57% of sales in USA)
  • Peak sales days (over 35,000 sold on best day) and sales trends over time
  • Highest daily sales per country (19,164 in the USA)
  • Chart performance: sales per day per country at #1
  • Appendix with 8 pages of raw sales data: units per day per country

Download the report here:
firemint.com/files/FlightControl-SalesNumbers.pdf

We hope that this information is useful to you. For interviews or media enquiries, please contact media@firemint.com.

  • natalia

    Thanks for sharing your data, guys. Very informative.

    I’m not sure if you recorded this, but I would be really interested in the numbers starting from your launch date, correlated with rank. It would be great to see the pattern of sales that it takes to get to #1. Did FC start selling like hotcakes right away and go straight to the top? Was it any particular media exposure that pushed it up?

    Thanks again, and congratulations on the success!

    Natalia from Imangi Studios
    http://www.imangi.com

  • Jonathan Carrigan

    Yes please… early launch info would be great. When did the numbers jump and what do you attribute the jump to?

    Thanks for being so open. The entire community benefits.

    Cheers!

  • Danemain

    Great Data Guys!

    I would also love to see the early trending data. It would wonderful if you posted a bit on how you got market awareness or if was entirely organic?

    Thanks again!

    Dane Atkinson
    http://www.squarespace.com

  • Steve

    Thanks for sharing this information – it’s really helpful to other indie game developers.

    Fantastic job on the game – it’s easily my favorite iPhone game out there. It makes perfect use of the touchscreen instead of trying to cram a traditional game mechanic into the touchscreen.

  • MBS

    Thanks for sharing all of this info and being so open. I’m still amazed by the level of sales reached by apps in the app store. Just thinking about it makes me want to get into iPhone development.

    Congrats on this level of success!

    Brent
    http://www.techbustr.com

  • 4.669201

    Brilliant game, thanks for sharing this. You guys deserve the success.

  • woo

    Congrats! It’s wonderful when hard work (and a little luck) pay off so well! Keep! Also kinda humbling when I think my app’s doing well at like 100x fewer downloads!

  • chris

    Can you provide us with the data of at what price you started out at and has the price changed over time?

  • Seppo

    Congrats, and thanks. Great info, and great game.

  • Dannie Francis

    please share what yur build up to launch was… how did you let people know it was for sale, what your price point is also.

  • Fabulous Photo Gifts

    Definately a firm favourite in the Fabulous Photo Gifts office (when we aren’t printing orders) hence the rather lowly score of 81 as a personal best.

    More practise and a helpful tip of ‘land the aircraft’ should see that figure beaten one day.

    Great app guys. Just got the upgrade.

    Jonathan

  • Ken Seto

    Thanks very much for sharing your data. You guys are my heroes. Flight Control is a stellar design and your success is well deserved.

  • Kris Jones

    Wow, I am impressed by what Flight control was able to accomplish.

    My game, Sparta, has managed by reach the Top 100 in a matter of days, but as others have posted, I would like to see initial downloads to see if Sparta is on track with such a game.

  • TheTick

    It probably helps that Nathan Fillion (of Firefly) is pimping this game all the time. :)

  • Grant

    Really nice of you to publish this info, thx. As other have said, your success is well deserved as it’s a perfect wee game for the device. My only fripe is that you have to start from scratch each game. Levels or difficulty settings would be a nice add-on :-)

  • enorasoftware

    Very cool post, really give one hope that it might happen in the future for http://www.enora.dk also. :)

  • Taytus

    I just wanna say thanks for this report.
    I've never played the game :( but I promise that I'll play it :)
    And i wish you guys best of luck!

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  • Fabrice

    trying to buy right now and is not available for Brasil?

  • http://www.facebook.com/alexandra.peters Alexandra Peters

    Hi Fabrice, thank you for your interest! Sadly this is true – unfortunately Flight Control is not available in Brasil as well as a few other countries :(

    There is a lot more information on this page: http://getsatisfaction.com/firemint/topics/why_…

  • I want IT!

    Can we get this for Windows PC too? I guess playing it with a mouse instead?

  • http://twitter.com/Firemint Firemint

    At the moment Flight Control is available on iPhone/iPod touch, iPad and Nintendo DSiWare. It should be out on many other mobile phones later this year. You can keep an eye on which platforms Flight Control has landed on here: http://firemint.com/flightcontrol – great to hear you like it :)

  • Hikouki_syounen

    This game is so nice!!
    But there are only one stage.
    So,please make a new stage of Flight control for iPod touch!!
    I'll buy it!

  • http://www.firemint.com firemint

    Actually, there are now five maps :) You can see pictures of the four additional ones here: http://firemint.com/?page_id=567

  • http://www.mobilewebgo.com MobileWebGo

    Hi, thank you very much for the information.
    Have you tried matching your data up against any of the App Store ranking algorithms?
    We've collected 2 at MobileWebGo.

    1) http://www.mobilewebgo.com/apples-app-store-ran…
    The formula I found that matches up best to the movement of the Tii App in the rankings is:

    (D1+D1+D1+D1+D2+D2+D2+D3+D3+D4+D5+D6+D7)/13

    With D1 being the number of sales in the past 24 hours, D2 being the number of sales from 25 to 48 hours ago and so on.

    2) http://www.mobilewebgo.com/what-algorithm-apple…
    The formula for App rankings only accounts for your last 4 days of sales.” The formula is 8 times the sales of the current day + 5 times the sales on the 2 proceeding days + 2 times the sales on initial date.

  • http://www.mobilewebgo.com MobileWebGo

    Hi, thank you very much for the information.
    Have you tried matching your data up against any of the App Store ranking algorithms?
    We've collected 2 at MobileWebGo.

    1) http://www.mobilewebgo.com/apples-app-store-ranking-algorithm-7-day-average-says-rob-podcast411
    The formula I found that matches up best to the movement of the Tii App in the rankings is:

    (D1+D1+D1+D1+D2+D2+D2+D3+D3+D4+D5+D6+D7)/13

    With D1 being the number of sales in the past 24 hours, D2 being the number of sales from 25 to 48 hours ago and so on.

    2) http://www.mobilewebgo.com/what-algorithm-apples-app-store-rankings-4-days-sales-says-fabernovel
    The formula for App rankings only accounts for your last 4 days of sales.” The formula is 8 times the sales of the current day + 5 times the sales on the 2 proceeding days + 2 times the sales on initial date.

  • mixmaster

    Hi, I can't download your report. Can you please fix?

  • http://twitter.com/Firemint Firemint

    We've released the game on PC via Steam! :) http://store.steampowered.com/app/62000/

  • http://twitter.com/Firemint Firemint

    Thanks for letting us know of the broken link, it should now work. It should be noted that this data is from quite a while ago, with Flight Control recently passing 3 million total sales.

  • zach

    I just stumbled over Flight Control HD in the Steam Treasure Hunt and it made my day. Excellent game. Respect.

  • http://www.seekomega.com Mark Fidelman

    Thanks for providing the transparency of your sales numbers for Flight Control. Any chance we can see 2010 numbers?

  • Guest

    Any chance of seeing flight control on the Wii?

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  • truck repair center

    Awesome. I love this. The game rocks. Just wish there were more levels.

  • truck repair center

    Awesome. I love this. The game rocks. Just wish there were more levels.

    http://www.centecequipment.com…

  • bucket trucks

    Just what i was looking for

  • Egvly

    Hi, when will there for discount?

  • http://www.jenesysgroup.com/ Online Advertising Agencies

    It is an interesting game. But it is available only in English speaking countries like US & Uk. I think you must make it available in different  languages so that everyone can enjoy the game .

  • http://www.performanceengineering.com/ hot water boilers

    Appreciated .. they have released it before knowing what the success is!

  • Joyce D’Souza

    When will the next report released to know more about the growth of the flight control 

    http://aliign.com/what-we-offer/outsourced-bookkeeping/

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