People who never spent a dime on games before, who are now collectively spending (or otherwise generating) hundreds of millions. This is "new revenue".
To what degree though? It's still too early to understand their spending habits. How many people are simply getting the free games vs actually spending money on them? How often are they spending? Are they continuing to spend or only initially? Certainly that opens up a new avenue of revenue but at what expense?
iOS leads the way, but Android can be meaningful if you approach it right. It makes up about 25% of our mobile revenues. That is not insignificant.
Most developers will say Android isn't worth the time though. That they're struggling on iOS as is.
Apple are providing the marketplace, but they are not dictating how publishers monetize their content. The marketplace with many sellers collectively drove the price of of paid apps down.
Luckily, Apple provide many avenues to monetize content on their platform, some avenues in which they don't even participate financially.
This is both good and bad though. Good that it offers freedom, but bad because it's the wild wild west in many cases and you do get issues like the low ball price points. Let's face it, freedom isn't always the best way to go. Sometimes there needs to be some structure. Apple knows this best because they're the king of the dictating the experience. Also look at Xbox Live vs PSN. Microsoft dictates a structure while Sony is more open. Most people will say Xbox Live is a better experience in the end.
I can tell you I'm not. I'm betting my company on it.
Well I wish you luck. I'm not saying nobody can have success. What worries me is how many people will fail though and what kind of games you can make on such low price points. I'd hate to see us moving more towards a casual game market at the expense of the core game market. I'm quite glad you're having success because I always love to see an Indie dev coming out ahead.
Everybody knows that. Hence why people are moving away from that model.
The console industry hit a brick wall with the retail model too. Unfortunately, it couldn't evolve fast enough (nor did the major players want to).
There are plenty of ways to monetize content on iOS and mobile in general - paid downloads, IAP, ads, sponsorships, subscriptions, incentivized traffic, transmedia sales etc. Every serious developer is exploring more than one of these.
And this is part of the problem. Nobody really knows how to really make money. It's still early and the wild wild west out there. People are trying to figure things out and many people are failing in the process. We'll have to see what the fallout is since it's clear the 99 cent model won't work in the long run.
Web social gaming and the Wii weren't catering to the "casuals" on the go. Which is another reason why gaming portables are always first in the line of fire when Apple diehards proclaim the greatness of their consumer electronic overlords.
Fair enough, this is a good point.
Do we have any solid sales numbers on pricier iOS games (that aren't ports of existing games) yet? I wonder which pricing model breaks first - the $60 blockbuster or the $0.99 "look at me too!" software.
I think we can begin by looking at the top sales charts on iOS and see how many games are in that price range. Here's a hint, there are barely any at all.
Sustainability? The way games are currently developed on consoles isn't sustainable either. You know, an industry where one project could sink a company because it didn't hit a certain metacritic score.
I agree. The current model is broken and we're likely going to head towards a major crash that will change the landscape of the game industry. People want their cake and to eat it too and it just isn't going to last. Something has to give. The $60 model where you put all your eggs in one basket and hope you don't fail and go out of business is terrible how it's evolved. That's one end while the 99 cent model is the extreme other end. Neither will last in the long run. People want great graphics, great content, huge blockbuster production values, but at bargain bin prices. What people want is not possible and as developers try to somehow hit these marks, they're going to cause the industry to crash in the process. All that content, graphic quality, and just level of expectation isn't cheap, yet somehow we want 99 cent games.
The reason the $60 model is where it's at is because of these demands. Rising development costs plus limited time frames have made it so that games balloon in cost, get content shorten as a result, and then fail because such high costs can't be recovered. The industry tries to curb that by hoping online passes and DLC will help curb used sales and increase revenue but it's only a stop gap measure and in many cases is causing their customers to leave.
Apple isn't alone in the industry going through a major turning point, but Apple is not helping either.
Got told what? Most people seem to grabbing on to one aspect and not looking at the overall picture. Core gamers have a right to be worried because the games they expect and like to play are threatened with the way things are shaping up in the industry. We could very well be heading towards a more dominated casual game market because the current model is broken and not sustainable while casual games are cheaper to produce. They don't carry all the demands and expectations that core gamers expect and that from a business perspective makes it attractive to focus on. I can accept that Apple is here and a major player in the game industry even though they don't actively partake in it. That doesn't mean I have to like the trend that I see unfolding before my eyes.
