Paid games app report

Boysano

https://apptopia.app.box.com/paid-game-apps-report

A detailed report on what markets and game genre or categories financial performances are,
in terms of deciding what market to target.

However I do not agree with every interpretation of the data the author gives,
it is a good summary of the data on app stores for each game category.

Please give your opinion on this info...
Will it affect your strategy,
or will you focus on making that Indie game you are really passionate about?

Basically how much weight do you give this.

PowerCat

This is great!
Thanks a lot for the information :)

dislekcia

I think it's only useful for potential pricing help if you have nothing else to go on. Beyond that, I wouldn't use it for much... Mostly because I think building games to target a specific market is the wrong way around - build a game first and see what markets it has. If it doesn't have a big enough or lucrative enough market, start a new game. Don't try to copy other people's markets or stratification, make your own.

wogan

It's good to know that $1.99 games sell at roughly the same rate as $0.99 games, if not slightly better. The same sort of pricing dynamic also exists in ebooks - Yes, it's technically double the cost, but it also implies that the game/ebook is deserving of that price. Sort of like micro-prestige pricing :P

EvanGreenwood

I think it's curious that Roleplaying Games (in what the App Store considers the "Role Playing" category) aren't as hit driven as other genres and are able to charge more.

Makes me a bit sad that we never found a way to do a sequel to Pocket RPG (because I really enjoyed that project and would have loved to have made it better).

AngryMoose

dislekcia said:

build a game first and see what markets it has. If it doesn't have a big enough or lucrative enough market, start a new game.

Ummmm... that sounds like a really expensive, and likely catastrophic, way to approach game dev.

Surely if you're not doing at least some rudimentary due diligence on how you're going to recoup your expenditure, let alone turn a profit, from a game that you're going to potentially spend multiple years developing, you're being seriously irresponsible and/or naive?

It's all fine and well to not decide upon the game that you want to make solely based on what you think is going to turn highest profit. I am also a firm believer in choosing to make the game that you want to make; not what the market says you should make, but that doesn't mean you should blindly dive headlong into building My Bestest Game X without having some idea on if it is going to be worth it in the end.

Bankrupt people / companies don't make very many games!

mattbenic

BlackShipsFilltheSky said:

I think it's curious that Roleplaying Games (in what the App Store considers the "Role Playing" category) aren't as hit driven as other genres and are able to charge more.

Makes me a bit sad that we never found a way to do a sequel to Pocket RPG (because I really enjoyed that project and would have loved to have made it better).

Pocket RPG is still one of the best mobile games I ever played. Come to think of it, a replay on the Mini Retina may be a really good idea. I'm also really sad there was never a sequel! ;)

dislekcia

AngryMoose said:

Ummmm... that sounds like a really expensive, and likely catastrophic, way to approach game dev.

Surely if you're not doing at least some rudimentary due diligence on how you're going to recoup your expenditure, let alone turn a profit, from a game that you're going to potentially spend multiple years developing, you're being seriously irresponsible and/or naive?

You can get a really good feeling of a game's potential marketability and who would be able to pay you for it at the prototype stage. Why on earth would you put years into developing something you're not certain you can sell? Build a test, see how that works, decide accordingly.

With how often I go on about rapid prototyping, I didn't think I had to re-iterate that again here. But, just in case: "Build a game" = "Rapid prototype out a new concept".

AngryMoose

dislekcia said:

You can get a really good feeling of a game's potential marketability and who would be able to pay you for it at the prototype stage.

OK, that's more clear input then. I can get behind that 100%. You didn't say 'make a prototype' initially; you said 'build a game', which are two draaaaaastically different undertakings :)

critic

Having numbers like this is very useful for short term projects, especially mobile projects.

It's easy to think up a little mobile game with limited gameplay that can be made in a month or so, with this information I might choose to pick a genre that has a higher probability of making some money for the same amount of effort.

Thanks for sharing.

Boysano

Another website or games (reselling) business model which keep intriguing me (when I see their sales newsletter) for the stats it gives on mobile game performance is apptopia. Apptopia also proves to me how much we can get away with in a largely unregulated industry...

Here is an example on their sales website: (where developers allow them to resell money generating apps/games)
https://marketplace.apptopia.com/listings/9976-76k-profit?ct=t%28Top+5+Listings+11.3.2014_Buyers%29

Off course most of these are just focused on games and apps as 'media entities', and not necessarily fun or indie games. Using large marketing budgets to get downloads and sales for the sake of selling the game as an income machine ('investment'), where the development you can say was purchased for the sake of reselling.

However it (the numbers and examples) could help us develop a better launch and monetisation strategy for new games, if we reverse engineer the process they used to monetise their games. (NB: not copy their games)

I'm curious to know what sites, and information you base your business model on? (For a game you would like to make , or have to make, this is not the topic! The topic is about planning based on data. Do you have data sources you'd like to share, discuss and strategies?)

If you where employed as a data analyst, or plan based on industry trends and data, how would you approach it. Then again do you even use this as part of the decision at all?
Hmm, would any of you like to develop a report like this with me, or am I the only one that is thinking about this?