Multiple Platform Release Strategy

I am nearing completion on my first mobile app, which I plan to release for Kindle Fire, Android (Google Play), and iOS devices. I have developed it using flash, so it will run within an AIR container which I hope will minimize device compatibility issues.

Release Strategy
My plan is to release the game first to Kindle Fire, and use the reviews and bug reports to get the app to a higher level of quality before publishing to Android (Google Play). I would then repeat this process before releasing to iOS. Hopefully the average period between each of these releases would be 2-3 weeks.

Rationale
The idea here is to maximize profit (duh! =)). It would do so by mitigating the risk of negative reviews from bugs, usability issues, etc in the larger marketplaces, as well as allowing me to maximize on the features players are responding well before going to the larger marketplaces. The rawest version would go to the platform with the lowest expected income potential first (Kindle Fire), and more polished versions would be submitted as the initial releases for Google Play and Apple AppStore.

Bottom Line
I am a career game developer, and I am putting out what I consider to be a strong product. This is my first time publishing to mobile. So I’d like to put the question to the group: Are there flaws in this strategy or in my rationale?

Thanks!

flaw: Amazon can take a week to review and make available your product. The same applies to updates. Got a critical bug you need to get fixed NOW ? … push it tonight and wait a week!

I would release on Android first and just be VERY responsive to bugs/complaints. Provide a feedback link in your game.

Don’t expect any feedback from Amazon AppStore users. Google Play is much, much better at this.

agree… I usually release any new updates to google play first. That way I can fix any unforseen bugs asap. Once the release is 100% stable I submit to amazon.

With google play I can fix the problem and have a working version out there in a couple hours… with amazon I’d be running the risk of having a buggy app for a couple of weeks really racking up the bad reviews. As long as you fix problems fast the users won’t complain too much and some will even give you a good review once its fixed because you responded so quickly.

Thanks for this information guys! I’ll definitely switch to launch on Google Play first.

Is one week a reasonable timeframe to expect meaningful feedback to come in? (on Google Play)

Your logic is wrong. Feedback is based on percentage of downloads. Count on 1-2% of users giving feedback… and that is if you actually bug them about it!

Check out this piece of code:

Please note: on some phones it will run EVERY DAMN TIME the user starts your app. I have not figured out wtf it does this. If anyone knows, please tell me!

Thank you.

I know that amount of feedback is going to be related to the amount of downloads (, asking for reviews, etc). However I was hoping for some anecdotal responses.

Perhaps the question would be better posed as: “For those of you who have experience publishing apps which received high enough levels of downloads to generate reviews, and had reviews which contained actionable feedback, how long have you had to wait before that actionable feedback started coming in?”

As to asking for reviews, I recently found this nice article on the subject, so I’ll mention it here:
http://businessofmobile.com/how-to-get-good-reviews-of-your-mobile-app/

Perhaps this is another SharedPreferences related issue.