KOTOR and XCOM box office figures

Over the past month, two large console projects have been released on iOS. The price of both was, to put it mildly, high. We decided to see how they behaved in the American cash market, and reflect on the topic: is the mobile market ripe for console-level projects.

On May 30, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, perfectly adapted and optimized for iPad, was released. It was immediately profiled by Apple on the main page. The price of the project was $9.99. It’s a lot of money, but not for such a project.

In general, the game started from the 3rd place in the American box office top of iPad applications. Then the indicators slowly went down. A week later, the game was already sitting on the 7th place in the box office chart. A month later, the project is already on the 58th position. It is difficult to say whether his indicators have stabilized, but we would like to think so. At least in the genre of role-playing games, he has been consistently in the top ten for about 30 days.

On June 20, XCOM: Enemy Unknown started from the 4th place in the box office top of iPad US, the cost of which is astronomical for Western projects of $19.99 (Japanese role-playing projects of Square Enix cost no less, but this is a separate topic and in many ways a completely different segment).

The drop in the box office top for the week at the 2K Games project turned out, despite the same feature, to be more noticeable. Here, most likely, not only a higher price played a role, but also a less recognizable brand than the Bioware project.

But, of course, first of all, we are interested in how much these games have earned. And now the difficulties begin. The last reliable information about the approximate number of downloads required to get into top paid (iPhone US) took place a year ago from Distimo.

It is hardly possible to start from these figures today. But if, for example, we take the XCOM indicators on the iPhone, then the order of the amount will still be possible to understand.

So that’s what we have.

A year ago, 3540 downloads were needed to get into the top paid-25.

Based on these data, XCOM in the USA did not earn a lot of money. The game was not included in the paid top 25 at all. That is, on the first day she was on the 33rd place in the paid chart, which means she could earn about $ 70 thousand.

But these, again, are very approximate calculations.

In November last year, Ethan Levy, one of the founders of the Quarter Spiral startup, gave such a sign with his own assessment of the market situation.

It is quite complete, and starting from it, it is easier to draw certain conclusions. On the other hand, its reliability raises questions. Anyway, based on these data, it can be calculated that in the first week KOTOR earned about $ 256 thousand on the American market.

XCOM on iPad earned even less in the first six days: $149 thousand.

Ridiculous money, considering that the development of a console project today can reach up to $ 30 million, and an AAA mobile project can cost the company more than $ 1 million, excluding marketing.

Of course, now you can argue with us that, they say, this is only the first week of sales and only for the American market. But let’s not forget that the American store still earns the most money, and the peak of sales of such projects falls precisely on the first week / month of sales. It’s only going to get worse.

So we are not sure that the mobile market is ready for big games today. And whether it will be ready is a big question. Here, crazy money “hits” projects of a completely different plan.

Sources: App Annie and Distimo