What do you think of the idea of releasing a cartridge-only homebrew title?

[plainsteve]

Well, it depends what the topic creator means by 'no digital release'.

Hi! Good point! What I mean is NES cartridge only. No Steam app, no ROM file.

That being said, were I to have a Kickstarter campaign with a stretch goal of, say, $500,000 for a Steam release or the like that was successfully met, well...that's different.

[gauauu]

These stats are helpful for understanding campaigns, but I think you have to look elsewhere to understand post-campaign sales.

I haven't done Steam or other modern platforms, so my stats are entirely cartridge and ROM sales (and you're right that Retrotainment's Steam/XBox/etc releases should be considered). In my experience, post-launch (whether or not via kickstarter), sales significantly slow down. I've gotten about 10% the sales of the KS each year afterward (plus or minus a bit, depending on the game and situation). Those sales are pretty evenly split between ROM and cartridge release. My margins are a bit better on cartridges, so they still make a bit more money than the ROMs do.

Do the people getting the physical cartridge also get a digital copy, or is it physical-only in all circumstances, with digital always a separate purchase?

I give the ROM away to physical backers. And you're right, this could make an impact.

but I would still wonder how many cartridge-only owners are actually playing the cartridge.

I wonder this a lot as well. It would be nice if there was a way to collect this data a year later. It's almost tempting to put together some sort of "one year later" survey to send out, if I could figure out a good reward to convince people to actually fill it out.

As best I can tell, your sales come from a mix of:
- Collectors. These people might play the game, but just as likely, the physical game will sit on the shelf.
- Homebrew fans. These people want to support you. If they get time, they will play your game on the NES. It might sit in their backlog for years first.
- Curious retro gamers. These people stumbled onto your game, have a working system, and will buy your game intending to play it on hardware.
- Casual folks: they just want a ROM, and might play it for 15 minutes before shrugging and moving on.
- Everyone else: no idea.

I guess after all this rambling, my point is: you will lose sales if you don't have a ROM or other digital release, but you can probably still have a reasonably successful launch unless you're trying to reach a specific profitability goal.

[NovaSquirrel]

In general, I want to make an NES game (purists will disagree), not a Steam game.

If you sell me a ROM then I can go ahead and play it on my NES with an Everdrive. I've implemented a few mappers for flashcarts before, so that's not an issue if the planned cartridge hardware isn't too wacky.

I personally do sometimes buy cartridges, but only do so when it will come with a ROM (and specifically a ROM, not a Steam app.)