"TheEndless" wrote:
The Top Paid category in the channel store on the device has been messed up for quite a long time. It was pretty obvious, considering the "Top Paid" channels were always a subscription baby content channel, a karaoke channel, a Spanish language training channel, and a channel with nothing but cycling videos, etc. Every one of those seems awfully niche to be the most popular paid channels. It also only included channels that were direct pay, which prevented any channel with in-channel purchases/upgrades to be included.
Hmm, looking at the web version - it shows monthly subscriptions too, along with "buy once" - so maybe Roku's is more of a "top grossing" rather than "top paid"?! (compare to iOS AppStore where the two are distinct, one is based on upfront purchases, the other on gross totals incl. in-app purchases)
Most likely the issue is not the metric/variable on which stats are collected but the small population size "per player model" - which is what player's "Streaming Channels"^ lists are based on - unlike the web version, which is the grand total of all players. So random (or manipulated) purchase events would disturb the sort order for a model class, giving questionable lists you observed. Thus they may have decided on retiring the list per-player. Or, they could've increased the time period length for which they average - but didn't (might have been too lazy if all other stats are done at same fixed duration).
With that said, a couple of my channels have spent a fair amount of time in the category, and I've seen a dramatic drop in sales since it was taken down (~70%). Hopefully Roku has plans to re-add it using better metrics... or, better yet, can provide some way of increasing visibility of channels after they've dropped out of the New category...
I've always thought a Recently Updated category would be very useful, so users could easily find out if/when a channel receives a major update. Inclusion in such a category would likely require some sort of opt-in option during submission and additional review, to avoid channels abusing it just to increase visibility.
That is concerning! - that there are no good ways for apps to get noticed, to distinguish themselves in a 3000+ pile^^ of shovel-ware. That something should be done to increase app visibility once dropped off "New" - definitely, from your lips to RokuCo's deaf ears!
But i doubt a manually-approved "recently updated" is going to happen. For two reasons - one, the Co. can't be relied on doing things they have already committed to - like weekly sorting the Games category (
hasn't happened for 6 weeks and counting) - so not likely to make more commitments. And two, "major update" is rather wishy-washy to define - leave it to human judgement, there'd be arguments back and forth, differences depending on luck with who's the reviewer. Both slowing the approval process...
(^) &*^&%^&%$!! stupid naming now instead of the clear, apt "Channel Store" of yore
(^^) i just noticed that one of my apps has the dubious honor of being the "10th least popular app of them all". My butthurt aside, even worse is the situation of "World Famous Places Puzzle", which is the 2nd-to-last if all (over 3k) channels were to be sorted by Roku's-concept-of-popularity. Which makes no sense whatsoever, since (a) the app is not bad - as the-barely-existing-for-Roku games go, it is rather decent and (b) unlike mine, it's free. So yeah, to borrow RokuJoel's mild expression, Roku channel rankings are "kinda borked"!
