Stardock: Mobile games are not yet a viable business
Developing games for mobile platforms is still not a worthwhile activity, said Brad Wardell, CEO of Stardock Studio, which created such series as Galactic Civilizations and Elemental.
"This does not mean that money cannot be earned on these platforms. But a viable business model assumes that it is possible to calculate that X investments will give a Y return," Brad writes in Stardock Customer Report 2014.
"iOS and Android are more like a lottery. If you win, you can stay to keep winning. If not, then most likely you will not come close to a return on investment."
Among the main problems of the mobile market, Brad highlights:
- Terrible resourcefulness;
- Extremely high sensitivity to prices (traditionally, price is a reflection of demand, in a market dominated by the absence of prices – this model does not work + the value of the price tag directly affects the number of downloads);
- Low "stickiness" to applications (low attachment rates).
"The weakest-selling DLC for our PC games generates more revenue than almost every iOS or Android product we've seen sales information about," adds Brad.
Source: http://www.stardock.com
