Microsoft: Windows Phone ARPU is closer to iOS than to Android

The Appintop podcast interviewed Romuald Zdebsky, head of Mobile games at Microsoft Russia. We publish the printed version of the conversation with the kind permission of the podcast on App2Top.ru .

Hi! Now Windows Phone is ahead of the same iPhone in sales in 22 countries. Share the latest figures about Windows Phone. What are these 22 countries where Apple managed to overtake?

According to the ADC, these are the countries of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. In Europe, these are Finland, the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, and Ukraine.

Did you manage to overtake iOS in Thailand?

Yes, according to the latest Fortuma reports, which included Malaysia.

Thailand is a country with a large penetration of Apple smartphones. Surprisingly, there was an overtaking.

It doesn’t surprise me that much. This is one of those countries that are actively developing now.

Tell me, how many apps are there on the platform now?

There are already more than 320,000 applications. Every day there are 500 more of them. If you look at the market, there are already 90% of the really necessary ones. 

In one interview, I read that Windows Phone is the perfect platform for a soft launch. Why?

At the soft launch stage, it is important to hone game mechanics, conversion and monetization with minimal costs. We can do this because our market is not clogged and not overloaded.

Moreover, in the case of an exclusive release of a new game on our platform, we are ready to promote it, feature it. 

For example, Arello Mobile staged a soft launch of Dragon Revenge on Windows/Windows Phone and received 100,000 downloads on organic in the first month.

Dragon Revenge

Another example: HeroCraft with Zombie Derby. Launched in parallel with Android, received 100 thousand downloads in the first 10 days. The ARPU of the project we had was twice as high as on Android. If they made the release exclusively with us, they could get more traffic.

Let’s take three leading platforms: where would you put Windows Phone in terms of ARPU? And the second question: we take the TOP cash applications – what figures are obtained in Russia? Maybe you can refer to some research, an article?

I know from reviews from partners that Windows Phone ARPU is closer to iOS than to Android. 

Let’s talk about getting on the platform. Probably the most classic case is when a developer is porting a game. How long does it take in modern realities?

There are fundamentally two possible situations. First: the developer has his own engine. Second: the developer uses a high-level framework for development.

If we talk about the second case, then we support the leading engines on Windows Phone, on Windows 8. This is the simplest situation, taking a week or a little more. A maximum of a month and a half, if a number of specific plugins are used, integration with some platforms, etc. 

But when you have your own engine written from scratch, it can take longer, for example, several months. However, we support almost all languages, the same C++, DirectX, Dot Net, HTML5, etc.

Let’s talk about feathering. How to get “on the pencil”?

When some interesting, good game exclusively comes out on Windows, this is an obvious reason and serious reasons for feathering. But we were just talking about this.

If we are talking about a popular game on iOS and Android, then this is again a good reason for us to get it.

There are a number of other things that increase the chances of getting a feature or increasing its volume: for example, the introduction of a trial.

How does it work?

The user sees the game in the store, clicks, sees two buttons: Try and Buy. If he is not ready to pay, he presses Try. The game is installed entirely, but it is impossible to pass it without buying it.

In order for such functionality to work, the developer only needs to indicate to what level the game is free, upon the onset of this moment, a person is offered to buy it. 

The user does not need to reinstall anything after the purchase, the game will continue from the next level.

According to a number of partners, in such a mechanism, the conversion can be even better than, for example, in free-2-play titles. 

The next important point is the use of live dashboards for games and applications. Through this panel, you can display useful information for the user: remind how many percent of the game has been completed, how many points have been collected, etc.

Is this an alternative to push and email return marketing?

Yes, but not so intrusive, push is difficult to balance, they are constantly being turned off.

Are there any rules regarding the same ratings, reviews? Is it possible to offer an internal currency for a review or a ban for this?

It is best to offer to evaluate it at a certain moment. But if you give game currency for the evaluation, this is a normal approach. The main thing is not to push too much that it should be exactly 5 stars. 

Some time ago, Apple banned any mention of the domestic currency for any review, because the developers used it very actively.

We have a more flexible position. 

By the way, now we have earned functionality – you can respond to ratings. 

But we do not reach such a level as Google Play, when applications there do not pass validation and verification, may contain malicious code, keyloggers, etc. We control the software that people install – we have a moderation process that takes 1-2 days.

Manually?

We have both automatic means and people. We check that there is no malware there. There are statistics on the number and prevalence of malicious applications, for example, in Google Play. We want to avoid this.

Question: Where can I catch an audience if I don’t have enough free organic store features? Where does the audience of Windows Phone owners sit? What tools are suitable for promoting these applications?

We try to help in promoting interesting games or exclusives through our channels. But at the same time, it is clear that our audience uses social networks, so we need to use their capabilities.

We also support a number of advertising networks. 

That is, the pool of tools for marketers is about the same as that of competitors? Do you have your own advertising networks? You have the capabilities, you’re Microsoft.

We have Microsoft Advertising, where you can buy and place ads.

For developers, there is a so-called pub center – it provides integration and purchase of various ways to display advertising. 

Which systems support Windows Phone. Are there any proprietary analytical tools that are available to me as a developer for free? 

We continue to work with various companies: now there is support for Windows Phone charts, Windows Store, etc. The pub center itself contains a number of analytics and reports. I periodically receive news on the addition of new and great features for this tracking.

This is something similar to Google Developer Console, right? The same reports, in fact?

I don’t compare them. The pub center is a mechanism that allows you to see how the placement, impressions, traffic related to advertising, the conversion of these steps in different sections and reports are going.

Which of such tools as tracking systems like AppsFlyer, edX, analytics do you support? I heard that you have E-just supported. I need some metrics inside my app: how do users behave, how do they fall off, what retention, return – with what tools can I measure this?

We communicate with all the leaders. It’s easier to go to the site, see which of them has what status.

A question about third-party payment methods. Can I install any aggregators that are supported by Windows Phone?

This is the choice of the developer: he can use our Windows Store embedded payment system or implement his own payment mechanism in the application.  In the first case, the profit is divided 30/70, in the second – 100% goes to him. It is important to understand here that it is much more convenient for the user to use embedded payments, so I think it is quite natural that developers will lean towards the Windows payment mechanism.

I dug up such an interesting opportunity on the web: I can port mobile applications to XBox – I would like details, what is needed for this? Are there any successful examples of such cooperation?

Now we have a special approach to development, called “Universal Project in Visual Studio”: you can create one project with a common code that will run on Windows Phone, Windows 8, and XBox One.

At our Build conference, we demonstrated the project of Russian developers JoyBits – the game Doodle God 2. One universal build was launched on Windows Phone, on Windows 8 and on XBox One.

Organizational moment: at the moment on Windows Phone, and on Windows 8, we have a public Windows Store where any developer can register and publish their games and applications.

Doodle God

On XBox One, a different mechanism is currently working organizationally: if a developer wants to publish something, he must go through the approval procedure.

There Marketplace is not open to everyone. The threshold for entering there is quite serious.

This is an important point to consider. But technically, if you are betting on universal projects, you now have the ability to simultaneously launch applications on both Windows Phone and Windows 8, and the technical ability to launch on XBox One.

Thanks for the interview!

You can listen to the original podcast here

Microsoft’s report on what indicators games can achieve on Windows Phone can be viewed here.