What is the best way to distribute my games?

[tonymuilenburg]

Hi All,
I'm developing some simple C++ windows forms application games using visual studio.net 2008, and am looking for some ways to distribute the game to paying customers. I'm starting with Intel's appup distribution, but that's only just starting to take off. Any suggestions?

[jwenting]

don't bother. Noone's going to buy them.

[tonymuilenburg]

lol. That's not the answer I was expecting :) Did you know that the plants vs zombies game made over a million dollars so far on the Apple apps store? Intel Appup is getting ready to bring a similar distribution out for netbooks, laptops, and windows based smartphones, and I'm hoping to get my games distributed on that. I'm not as interested in the money as getting my games out there for people to play. I'm also a fairly new developer, so I'm not going to be able to bring out anything as cool as plants vs zombies. Is appup my only choice? I have paid a little for shareware over the years downloaded from sites like download.com and two cows, but I'm looking for something more like Apple's distribution model.

[jwenting]

you have 3 problems, not 1 (or maybe more than 3).
1) you have no experience writing software
2) you have no distribution channel
3) you have no marketing tools
4) you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of people are going to just pirate it

Until you rectify 1) there's no need to look into any of the others.
Apple's distribution model is way too ambitious for you, the only practical way for it to work would be for you to contract them to distribute for you (which is what most people do who develop for iPhone).
They do however have a strict vetting program to ensure that only things they like (quality, content, etc) get into their store.
Unless you're a more experienced developer you're unlikely to get your software approved for sale through their channels.
I assume other resellers have similar programs (though likely with other requirements of course).

[Sodabread]

As much as I always hate to burst the bubble of an aspiring game developer, J has a good point. How simple are these games you're talking about? Are they just tic-tac-toe and checkers or something similar? For people to buy your games, first you'll need to build something that people want to pay for. If they want to pay for it, but it's not distributed in a really easy way (see: Apple's app store), then you won't get sales because people don't want to go through trouble to download a simple game.

There are distribution channels out there for your games besides Apple's store, but you'll need to build something a lot more impressive than some simple WinForms games (although I would pay for a copy of Castle of the Winds if I could find one to run on Win7). My advice is to get past the simple games and build something bigger & better using C++ & OpenGL/DirectX or C# & XNA or whatever combination of tools you see fit. Using the latter (XNA), you can distribute your games on XBox Live Indie Games, but also through he Zune app store for the more simple ones.

There are a LOT of ways to get your games out there, they just need to be worth buying.

[tonymuilenburg]

Thanks for the feedback. I made a sum-sudoku (killer sudoku) game with 100 levels, which is somewhat complex. I'm playing around with XNA, but don't have anything compelling yet.