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Where have all the iOS games gone?

minotaurproject.co.uk

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Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#191

Post by themartorana »

Lerc wrote: post #157
themartorana wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but the point of this thread was that there is room in the middle to make money, you don't have to be in the top 200. We use rewarded video and advertising and IAP in free-to-play games our users play, but we have no desire to be exploitative. The amount of room between basic free-to-play and psychological warfare on your players is enormous.

If you sorted your customers by the amount of revenue they generate? How much revenue comes from the individual at the bottom of the top 50% of revenue?

It's mixed. Our most popular game is still supported by an old style of advertising, and some players that have played daily for years still prefer to look at/ignore advertising than pay the $2.99 (now $4.99) to get rid of ads. In fact, that's true of the majority of players - less than 5% of our revenue comes from that IAP. This is why I say people have told us how they want to pay us for their fun and our server costs. They've had the opportunity to pay us with money forever. Most never will.

Rewarded video makes up about 10% (currently it's not in a very prominent placement, some games make a majority of their money that way - see Shooty Skies).

So to kind of answer your questions, the longer people play, the more they're worth to us, which feels fair to us (and again, they can pay to rid themselves of ads anytime they want). We will be featuring rewarded video more prominently, which allows the user to have more choice in the matter (although I'm betting they chose ads over cash most of the time, but that's just years of experience talking).

Edit: I should add that our ARPU (average revenue per user) is less that $4.99, so we'd still much rather people buy ads away with IAP.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#192

Post by k-mcgrady »

themartorana wrote: post #113
k-mcgrady wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "If that's the path I have to take to make money on iOS, I'll take a path on a different platform." I think this is about much more than iOS. Anything that can be delivered online (software, music, movies etc.) is something that consumers think should be free. Strangely they are willing to get milked after download through things like in-app purchase.

"Milked" is seriously loaded. AAA console games cost $60 and up - do you know how hard it is to get a paying freemium user to even $10? Yes. There are people that spend thousands. They also spend thousands on $60 AAA games as well. The idea that players get "fleeced" is ridiculous. Spent $15 on Candy Crush, a game that you spent months playing? That really doesn't seem like a lot to me. Edit: I should acknowledge tha…

I should clarify. I meant they were getting milked in that if the game cost $1-5 dollars (a one time fee) they would be against paying it but they are oblivious to paying $15-20 over a year through in-app payments. I did not mean that the developer was extracting more money from them that the product is worth.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#193

Post by osi »

CydeWeys wrote: post #115
jarjoura wrote: post #107

How is it that Sony PS4/Vita stores can sell these same indie games for $20 a pop? Sony pushes these games hard and gives every one of them a fair amount of free marketing. They also celebrate their game developers by writing about them on their blogs and press-releases. The Apple App store in its current iteration is just mentally exhausting. Everytime I open it up I'm presented with a new grid of app icons and no c…

I'm a lifelong gamer who's entered a bit of a rut these past few years. I would love to pay to play great apps on my phone. But I don't have the slightest clue as to how to find them. The top grossing lists are all complete F2P junk, and there's nothing close to the cottage industry that's built up around PC and console gaming. Every time I try to go look up good mobile games I get hit with lots of dodgy top-10 compi…

toucharcade.com is a good source for iOS game reviews.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#194

Post by michaelbuddy »

amelius wrote: post #179
fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. The truth is there's plenty of us in the middle still. My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. The problem is…

> My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. This statement does not say much, because in the worst case, that's $100.000 divided by two equals $50.000, which is less than average wage for programmers. In the best case, you make a pretty good salary :) Anyway, I just wish Apple would disclose some numbers about app sales. There's one thing worse than government regulating a mark…

Yeah but if it's passive income for majority of time on existing titles, during the year that's great.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#195

Post by coldtea »

>To give some idea of just how awful iOS was for us, the first non-iOS game I did after spending two years on iOS, released on a Sony handheld that many describe as being “obscure”, generated literally thousands* of times more income for us than two years and ten games on iOS with its potential billions of users.*

Yeah, but the Sony handled has like N titles, whereas the iOS has 1000xN.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#196

Post by coldtea »

amelius wrote: post #179
fnayr wrote: post #14

I hear this myth perpetuated incessantly. (That there's no more middle ground in the app store, only the Clash of Clans and Candy Crushes and the rest with no downloads). People paint the picture that it's the top 0.1% and everyone else with an unsustainable business. The truth is there's plenty of us in the middle still. My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. The problem is…

> My two person iOS dev studio has pulled in 6 figures a year for the past 4 years. This statement does not say much, because in the worst case, that's $100.000 divided by two equals $50.000, which is less than average wage for programmers. In the best case, you make a pretty good salary :) Anyway, I just wish Apple would disclose some numbers about app sales. There's one thing worse than government regulating a mark…

>This statement does not say much, because in the worst case, that's $100.000 divided by two equals $50.000, which is less than average wage for programmers.

Depends on where you live. Not everybody lives in the US, or even the valley.

Plus, even if $50000 is easy to pull in a lot of places as a programmer, with the mobile games they get to do it being their own bosses and creating the programs they want -- which beats working for a pointy haired boss or pulling all nighters for some "Facebook for turtles" startup.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#198

Post by CydeWeys »

iofj wrote: post #159
CydeWeys wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were going to get an entire dedicated system for mobile gaming, I think a PS Vita or Nintendo 3DS XL would be a better choice -- they're both way cheaper, have dedicated controls for gaming, and have large libraries of purpose-built games. But I'm just not interested in more devices, especially ones I'd have to remember to charge and bring with me. I already have a smartphone, several desktops, two laptops, a Ki…

Some renew your office subscription and get you excel updates etc for another year, and cost like 20-30$ more than just the office subscription itself.

I don't use any of that stuff either though. I'm a big GNU/Linux guy (at home and at work), and I exclusively use Windows for gaming. Office 365 subscriptions hold no value for me.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#199

Post by joeblau »

tluyben2 wrote: post #11
joeblau wrote: post #8

I have a game that I made over a 4 day period on iOS and Android. It's not brining in much revenue, but it was a cool challenge. My game isn't really that great, but I haven't touched it in over a year as well as there is no motivation to keep working on it. Once too many bugs start showing up, I'll probably pull it from all 3 app stores.

Which one is it? I always find it interesting to see what someone can do in a short time.

- https://joeblau.com/orb/ - The idea was based on bullet time so when you're moving the Orb, time is passing, but when you pick your finger off of the screen, time pauses. The goal is to dodge all of the smaller black orbs as long as possible.

Re: Where have all the iOS games gone?

#200

Post by CydeWeys »

osi wrote: post #193
CydeWeys wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a lifelong gamer who's entered a bit of a rut these past few years. I would love to pay to play great apps on my phone. But I don't have the slightest clue as to how to find them. The top grossing lists are all complete F2P junk, and there's nothing close to the cottage industry that's built up around PC and console gaming. Every time I try to go look up good mobile games I get hit with lots of dodgy top-10 compi…

toucharcade.com is a good source for iOS game reviews.

I've read that site before, and it has pointers to good games -- unfortunately most are iOS-exclusive though. I have an Android phone.
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