[tomasien]

Tim is, in this blog, forcing you to REALLY define need, and I think "tons of marketing dollars for initial launch" is not a need, ever. What you need is to prove that, when they find the game, they'll download and pay for it. Invest $100 in marketing, and see what your ROI is. If it's high enough, somebody with half a brain would put up the money to amp up the spend.

I do not agree that these "need" massive marketing, but it does depend on the scale. The only game I worked with delivering has over 20,000 downloads and absolutely no marketing, because there are a ton of blogs that write about iPhone games. It's not a very good game, and it has absolutely 0 viral mechanics, or else I'd posit we'd have more.

We were lucky, to be fair, but I disagree that a "startup" that is making a game "needs" massive marketing dollars. It seems like you "need" viral mechanics, press, devoted fans, or an incremental ad spending campaign where you constantly re-invest the money you have.