After a long hiatus and many weeks of porting, we are happy to announce that TurretWars MP 2.0 is out on the Mac App Store. Single & Multi-player turret battles! Check it out now – http://itunes.apple.com/app/turretwars-mp/id429354975?mt=12
Ok, I guess I have been putting this post off for long enough, so time to fill everyone in on whats been going on with us no longer selling our Mac games via our own Sector3 website.
When the Mac App Store launched early this year, our game sales went crazy – StuntMANIA made it into the top 10 overall app list within a week, and though we never expected to have such a massive success on the store, we quickly found that our MAS sales were FAR exceeding our own website sales, to the point of reducing our own websites Mac sales to a slow crawl.
It was at this stage that we had to make a decision about what sales platforms we were going to support, and being a small company, supporting two sales platforms with totally different copy protections systems, support mechanisms and distribution platforms just wasn’t financially viable for us.
It was a really hard decision for us to make because we knew that the MAS was only available to Intel Mac owners and that they also had to be running 10.6.6 to access the store. These would exclude all our PowerPC customers and non 10.6 users, but the numbers didn’t lie and we were selling more copies of our games than ever before.
So we decided to stop selling our Mac titles on our own website and have been moving all of our Mac games over to the MAS. Since doing so, our business model has simplified in so many ways. Not having to support older hardware has allowed us to push our games quality and features further than ever before, and it has allowed us to be more competitive on price.
So, what dos this mean for our customers running PowerPC hardware? Or haven’t upgraded to 10.6 yet? It means that the version you are now running is the last updated version you will receive. Your license doesn’t expire, and you can keep using your games as long as you wish. We thank you for your custom and support over the years (and we hope you upgrade your Macs soon 
)
So what does that mean for customers that ARE using Intel Macs but bought our games via the Sector3 and not the Mac App Store? Well it means you need to contact us via our support page and we will look into when you purchased your game and if eligible, we will issue you a free promo code for the same title via the MAS, allowing you to stay up to date with our new distribution platform.
As we only get issued 50 Promo Codes per title, per version at a time, upgrading everyone that is eligible may take some time, but we are committed to the process, so contact us immediately if you bought a title from us recently and are running an Intel Mac with 10.6.6.
So, there it is…. one of the hardest business decisions I have ever had to make. But as they say, time stands still for no man, and neither does technology. Apple have provided us with a better way of delivering our awesome games to existing and new customers and we have embraced this opportunity with loving arms.
BTW… StuntMANIA Reloaded is currently #8 Game in the US on the Mac App Store.
That’s right, Circuit Defenders is now available on the Mac App Store and at a new low introductory price! It’s already climbing the charts around the world and we are excited to see how many people are enjoying playing it.
We are also now selling the Windows version of Circuit Defenders again via our website for those that are not on the Mac platform.
January 6th 2011 is a date we will remember for a long time, as most of you will know that is the day the Mac App Store launched. We managed to get StuntMANIA 4.5 on the store for launch and the results are amazing!
We spent the whole weekend glued to our Macs watching it climb the charts.
Thanks so much to everyone who has bought StuntMANIA and for reviewing it so highly, as of now 4 Stars on the US App Store.
We have an updated version submitted with Apple to fix a problem some people are having with the Gamepad setting screen. Hopefully that will be live real soon.
Like a lot of developers out there we have had many conversations about shifting our business model to the App Store exclusively and in the end we have decided to do so.
We’ll blog more about this but the biggest benefit by far is that we can focus more on making games and less on website stores, payment gateways and copy protection systems. With limited resources that a small developer like us has, this makes a huge difference to us.
StuntMANIA 4.5 is now available exclusively on the Mac App Store for just $US 4.99 (launch sale) and can be found here
