Data-Driven Choices — App Store Image Updates
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The current way to update screenshots in the Apple App Store is sometimes a headache, small changes could be hours of work, lets deep dive into why for our recent update we opted out of updating various screenshots.
In our most recent release of Chance Rope, we supported a new feature called Hearts. You now can use hearts (like lives) when you pull the wrong rope that losses, you can use a heart to recover. Before this version, you had to watch an ad to recover your game. Allowing you to play Chance Rope longer, as long as you have hearts to use.
Other than Hearts, we also did some minor changes to current chances by adding a couple of new chances like wind, snow, hurricane and bug attacks to your ropes. As well as a few fun changes to the game and some bug fixes to the app too.
But when preparing the app for the App Store, updating content can become a headache especially if you have an app that is localized which Chance Rope is.
The only significant update is this area on the screen for Hearts. But when it came to considering updating the screenshots for the App Store the lift was too great to update such a small area on each screen.
We would need to update 100 different screenshots to make Hearts present everywhere.
So let's break it all down.
Language
For the App Store submission, we submitted an update to English (US), English (British, which includes Canada and Australia), Spanish (Latin America), French, Italian and German.
So with English together, that's 5 languages.
Devices
We supported iPad in the last version update so updated screenshots will include both iOS and iPad devices.
Not to forget about how Apple still requires media screenshots for both TouchID and FaceID devices. Apple also suggests supporting new screenshots for the Dynamic Island for the newest iPhone 14 Pro models but has not currently required it as of now.
So with all that, there are 4 device types to support.
Screenshots
Now not all of the screenshots that Chance Rope uses currently have the area where Hearts was introduced, so there is a slightly reduced amount required to update, but there is still some.
With the current screens that do need Hearts added, 5 out of 6 media screens needed to be updated.
So if we take that all, update all the localized screenshots for both iOS and iPad as well as only update the ones that need the update, the total number of screenshots needed to be updated is 100 screenshots.
When your app doesn’t have significant changes, it's very hard to justify the amount of work to update the screenshots. We will update screenshots as we change more drastic changes in the future like 4+ ropes, mini-games and new screens. But until then, we will keep the original screenshots.
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