Postmortem- Nanosaur 2 on Amazon Appstore

We recently released the Android version of Pangea's excellent Nanosaur 2, and it's available exclusively on the Amazon Appstore.  A number of folks have asked me about our experience working with the Amazon team, so I thought it would be helpful to post a mini "postmortem."

While Nanosaur has enjoyed tremendous success on iOS, it's widely know that premium apps like Nano have a tougher time in the Android space.  Knowing this motivated us to search for a way to successfully introduce Nano to the Android market.  It didn't take much for us to realize that Amazon presented an interesting opportunity in their new Appstore.

What Went Right

1. Communication-- right from the beginning, the Amazon team was responsive and fully engaged.  We approached them to see if they were interested in doing some kind of promotion with us for Nanosaur, and we got a response in less than 24 hours.  Over the course of about 2 weeks, 2 conference calls, and a handful of emails we were able to work out the details of the agreement.
2. Promotion-- Amazon.com is an e-commerce powerhouse.  Being featured on their site-- even in their fledgling Appstore area-- is a big boost for a small studio like citizen12.  They have a variety of promotional tools in their toolbox, and we were able to work out a combination of features that we felt would help get Nanosaur the kind of exposure it deserves.
3. Infrastructure-- One of the last things you want when working on deadline is to have your tools fight against you.  Amazon's Developer Portal worked great and enabled us to deal with the nuts and bolts of uploading the game and associated marketing materials with ease.
4. Test support-- This may be the #1 benefit of working with Amazon.  Developers in the Android space have rightly complained that there's no good way to test your apps on all the different Android devices out there.  Like Apple, Amazon runs all their appstore submissions through a validation/test process.  This includes testing on many popular devices, including numerous devices we don't have on-hand at citizen12.  The result was awesome.  Their test team identified 4 issues that would have caused lots of customer heartache, had we released the app as-is.  They worked with us to re-test the fixes and in the end the collaboration meant that the Nanosaur 2 which went live was much improved over the Nanosaur 2 we had initially submitted.

What Went Wrong 

1. Communication-- After Nanosaur 2 went live on the Amazon Appstore, we realized that we didn't fully understand how the various aspects of the promotion would be managed by Amazon's marketing team.  We had expected Amazon to lead with the major component-- 50% off and prominent placement on the Appstore landing page-- but instead they led with some of the smaller promotional tools.  It only took a couple of emails to work out where the misunderstandings were, but it definitely made it a bit more challenging for us to coordinate our marketing efforts with the Amazon promotion.
2. Timing-- This one lies squarely in citizen12's lap.  The studio was taking some planned downtime during July, which unfortunately was the same time we decided to launch Nano.  I had somewhat foolishly thought I could manage the rollout from abroad, but my absence caused some unnecessary work for folks at both citizen12 and Amazon.  Basically, we should have waited a few weeks before launching.

Conclusion

Overall, Amazon's presence in the Android market is a positive for both developers and users.  They provide a much-needed service by offering a "curated" portfolio of Android games and other apps.  They help small developers like citizen12 by providing QA services that would otherwise be out of reach.  They also provide healthy competition for the Android Marketplace.  

Our experience working with Amazon was a positive one, and we'd definitely work with them again.