The fate of paid games on mobile markets
Journalists from PocketGamer decided to figure out what a paid game can count on in today’s mobile app market. Is there an opportunity to make money not on f2p and not on freemium when it comes to iOS and Android?
In the USA, FIFA Soccer 13 has not left the top twenty box office games for iPhone since its release on September 25, 2012. This is surprising for two reasons. Firstly, Americans, as a rule, are not very interested in the usual football. Secondly, the application is paid, and it costs a decent $ 6.99.
In turn, it is well known that now the road to success runs through the hills of freemium and f2p, and any paid game is doomed to a brutal, unequal war with superior enemy forces. And take a look at the top 20 cash games for iPhone – there are also mostly free apps.
And the exceptions here are mostly games with really big names. FIFA, Minecraft, Bad Piggies – all of them were actively promoted by Apple itself.
When looking at the box office gaming top 50 on Google Play, it’s still more, let’s say, unambiguous. There are only two paid applications for fifty games: the same Minecraft and the game adaptation of The Dark Knight Rises from Gameloft.
Moreover, on both Android and iOS, almost any cash success of a paid application is short-lived.
The wonderful Bastion, for example, was launched in August 2012 on an iPad for just $4.99. Hardcore players were familiar with the project from its PC and Xbox 360 debut. Then the game had both good sales and good reviews.
The release on the iPad also garnered excellent press, but the project lasted less than a week in the American box office twenty. At the moment, he is not even in the gaming top 500.
If you look at Horn, it’s the same story with him. The game stayed in the top twenty for a couple of days after its release, but by the end of the first month it was below the 500th position. Reducing the cost to $2.99 (initially the game cost $ 6.99) returned the game to the 89th position in the iPad top, but the next day it began to rapidly lose ground.
The obvious exceptions to the rules are the Minecraft mentioned a couple of times and the Wipeout project from Activision. And if the secret of the first one is a secret behind seven locks, then with Wipeout, which at a price of $ 1.99 has been sitting at the top positions in the paid chart for the second week and shows decent results in the box office top, everything is a little easier. The game is based on a popular show that is currently collecting ratings in the United States.
So a more curious exception is Kick the Buddy: Second Kick from Crustalli. This 99-cent toy entered the box office gaming top 100 two days after its release and has not left it since. Moreover, at the peak of its success, it was even among the top ten highest-grossing projects for the iPhone.
A similar success story has Mini Empires Plus for $0.99, which has not been out of the top 100 since August, and Arms Cartel Global, which is slowly but surely rising in the box office top. If in May she occupied the 127th position in it, periodically falling below the mark in the top 500, now she has 31st place.
These paid games have reached their positions without a brand behind them, which means that a paid game still has a small chance to succeed on mobile platforms. However, such projects will still remain in the minority.
