Version 2.0 of Xploding Boxes added support for Spanish, so now almost a month later I figured that it would be worth a look to see how much of an improvement (if any) that this additional feature had on customer adoption of the product.

These first two charts show the break down by language for downloads, and purchases of version 1.6 of Xploding Boxes from July 23rd through September 8th. At this point Xploding Boxes was only available in English. None of the languages in the “other” category are close in size to Spanish, for a more detailed look at the languages in the first chart see this post from early September.

While English is by far the most dominant language for downloads, it is even more dominant when it comes to purchases of the full game. While part of this is probably due to correlations between language and income (and payment options), I supposed that part of it was also due to the game requiring you to play (and upgrade) in English.

So support for Spanish was added to version 2.0 of the game. The below chart shows the break down by language for downloads, and purchases of version 2.0 of Xploding Boxes from September 16th, through October 13th.

Despite expectations that support for Spanish would result in more downloads and purchases by those who speak the language, the data actually shows the trend going the other way. One possible explanation for this is that version 2.0 also added support for the BlackBerry Tablet, which has seen most of its sales in English speaking countries. However given how few tablets have been sold this does not explain away the lack of growth from Spanish users. As such the only conclusion that I can come to is that the benefits of localization are minimal.