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sethnintendo on 30 September 2017
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HoloDust said:
sethnintendo said:

Well indie games make most their money on Nintendo platforms compared to other platforms.  Gunman Clive developer and a few other developers stated that most their sales and profit come from Nintendo eshop compared to Android, iOS and other platforms.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/03/gunman_clive_eshop_sales_surpass_combined_totals_on_ios_and_android

Not really best thing to compare Nintendo platforms with iOS and Android - something about 500 games per day are launched on those platforms, discoverability is major issue there.

This is fairly old artilce (2015), by it gives better picture of what to expect when it comes to launching indies on some platforms:

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237811/500_games_launched_per_day_on_iOS_last_year_and_other_digital_sales_facts.php

Yes but Gunman Clive did get exposure on Android front page for awhile.  I remember it because that was one of the last few times I actually went to the Android shop before deciding to stop using a Google account on my phone.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/01/gunman_clive_developer_3ds_eshop_is_healthier_than_ios

That graph is from a Jan 2013 article and the first link I showed was from March 2013 (so from Jan - March the 3DS caught up and then outsold iOS and Andriod combined).  It is a little hard to judge the graph considering it doesn't provide sales numbers and only provides weeks I assume.  However, you can see when Google started promoting the game on their front page.  Look at that bump on blue.  However, I assume sales nose dived once their front page promotion ended. 

Now looking at the 3DS eshop graph (was only on 3DS on first release) one can see a steady flow of sales and then it just keeps accelerating possible due to exposure on Nintendo's eshop or being a relatively cheap (I believe it released at 1.99) and good indie platform game. 

Granted not all indie developers are rewarded for their games even if they are good games.  However, if you release a decent game (such as World of Goo) then you can be promised to get decent sales.  The only developer that got semi screwed was the Retro City Rampage developer on Wiiware because I believe he never crossed that sales threshold that they used to have under their archaic policies during the Wii era.  I know MDK developer was pissed off too about that but I can't speak of the quality of MDK.  However the Retro City Rampage developer I'm sure made decent money on releasing his game on the 3DS eshop so he probably isn't mad at Nintendo anymore (because if he was then he probably wouldn't have put it on 3DS which I'm sure he is glad that he did go through with it).  So as of now I only know one indie developer that is pissed at Nintendo and that was due to archaic sales threshold for Wiiware titles which has been elminated for many years now.