I am still being surprised by how well Galactic Wars 3 has been received by the communities, both XNA and Zune. I of course have my internal goals for each release which includes how many downloads it must achieve before a second release is deemed really necessary. But also how fast it achieves this goal and how it does this relative to the last release. For example, over all the releases so far I have tracked that it has been downloaded from my servers well over 3000 times. Having been released for about 16 days, this means an average of 187 downloads per day on the item. Not bad considering the last item, Domination, was downloaded a mere 2600 times over the course of 4 months.

Today I released a new version of the game and it has already met my expectations for the day. Despite raising them, I am still taken back by the amount of downloads a mere update generates. I guess it goes to show that when push comes to shove, people want new simple features over the world’s greatest game. I have come to this conclusion based on a few factors, including that the past two releases have been some of the fastest downloaded and contain the biggest small feature enhancements like new levels, new enemies or a high score list.

Hopefully my other games can meet ever increasing expectations since I have no raised the bar somewhat for myself and other Zune developers.