Evolving Markets and Target Platforms

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Well we knew that Free-to-Play apps with in-game purchases was a popular model these days, but I never imagined just how popular it was with users/customers.

According to this report 40% of players have made in game purchases in FTP titles.  That's about 10x what I would have guessed! 

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/04/23/npd-40-of-free-to-play-players-have-bought-something/

[Prime_8]

wow

[T_M_C]

Yeh, can't say i'm surprised.

I've seen Mmorpg after mmorpg go free to play.

Their player base rockets after going free to play.

And the farmvilles of this world are incredibly succesful too.

It's very interesting to watch the way the industry is moving now.

Traditional shop retail is dying a slow death whereas digital distribution is taking over.

It's a very fast moving industry.

TMC

[fog]

Traditional shop retail is dying a slow death whereas digital distribution is taking over.

It's a very fast moving industry.

It really is.  The big problem with digital distribution as I see it is still download speeds.  A few years ago people were saying it wouldn't catch on until more people had proper broadband speeds, but now that is commonly the case, game file sizes themselves have grown at a rapid rate, arguably faster than internet speeds.

For many big games we don't seem to be any closer to relying exclusively on direct downloads than we were 5 years ago.

[T_M_C]

Heres another interesting thing about digital distribution.

And that is the file sizes.

I'm on a pay as you go mobile broadband connection.

Which is limited to 2gb a month bandwidth.

If i want any more bandwidth that month i need to pay extra.

This makes me very careful about my bandwidth useage.

And means i don't download large files ( re games ) much at all.

I'd rather actually buy the retail version of a game.  Which is more cost effective for me personaly.

And there must be millions of users in a similar boat to me.  Where bandwidth is a limiting factor to what they can download.

And theres nothing worse than installing your latest game, only to find out it needs a 2 gb downloaded patch.   

One of the reasons i stopped playing Warcraft.

TMC

[fog]

Yeah I would imagine that's quite a common problem.  And some mobile games are relatively large these days.  Infinity Blade was about 400Mb IIRC and most mobile phone data plans only seem to run to 500Mb per month.


Even though my broadband is uncapped(ish) I still wouldn't want to be downloading next gen games.  What's a Blu-ray store, 50Gb?

[Prime_8]

lol my mobile is 1gb , but it gets wifi from my bradband athome , so if i remember to enable wifi , it comes of my 6gb /month cable modem.

but it has used 200mb + just in updates .. LOL  crazy . Iphone used to be like that too .

[fog]

Some interesting stats on Ars Technica about App Store sales, marketing budgets etc although I don't think they tell the whole story.

For example "59% of apps don't generate enough revenue to break even on development costs", but I'd have thought over 59% were developed part time as a hobby by good old bedroom coders with no real overheads?

Some of the comments after the article are worth reading too.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/05/ios-app-success-is-a-lottery-and-60-of-developers-dont-break-even.ars

[T_M_C]

It all seems a bit of a Black Art to me.  

I liked the analogy to the Music industry.

There must be millions of struggling bands out there with only a very small percentage of them getting mainstream success.

I just see this as the problems that arise from a saturated market.

If you think about it, this holds true for all area's of business nowadays.  

There must be very few area's of business now that arn't saturated.  Especially in the tecnological western world.

Interesting read.  If quite pessimistic.


Talking of Apple.  Have you seen this, posted over at the Blitz forums.

Apple's total sales in 2011 were $128 BILLION. ($128,000,000,000). That's more than the gross domestic product of about 160 nations in the world.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=97805

Incredible stats.  

I read the biography to Steve Jobs a couple of months ago.

A very interesting read.

And certainly a man with the magical touch when it came to business and design.

I never knew about his involvement with Pixar until i read the book.

And now look at the success of Apple.

It's mind boggling.   

TMC

[fog]

It all seems a bit of a Black Art to me.   

It is   Obviously the more time and money you put into marketing the more chance you have although nothing is guaranteed.

Too many people still look at the App Store as easy pickings when in reality it's probably the most difficult market to break right now without a huge dose of luck.  When the most successful Apps spend an average £30k on marketing you have to sell a hell of a lot of games at 69p before you can even contemplate spending a fraction of that.

Talking of Apple.  Have you seen this, posted over at the Blitz forums.

Apple's total sales in 2011 were $128 BILLION. ($128,000,000,000). That's more than the gross domestic product of about 160 nations in the world.

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=97805

Incredible stats.   

Yeah it's amazing.  I know Steve had pretty strong views on games and games devices, but I'll be surprised if they don't make a big effort in that direction now it's driving a lot of hardware sales for them.

[fog]

More info.  Every bit helps

The last point in partciular is pretty amazing and shows a big jump from the figures from last year quoted earlier in this thread.

The average iPhone/iPad gamer is spending about five times more money on their mobile games than the average Android gamer.
...
The company found that 28% of smartphone gamers are gaming on an iPhone, and 60% of tablet gamers are gaming on an iPad, but iOS is accounting for much more of the industry on a revenue basis. In fact, 84% of all mobile gaming revenue came from iOS devices
...
Get this – 91% of all Android and iOS gaming revenue comes from purchases made within the games. Only 9% is attributed to the amount of money spent at the time of download.

http://www.slashgear.com/apple-iphone-gamers-spend-five-times-more-than-android-gamers-06226381/

[fog]

Angry Birds hits 1 billion downloads. 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/170021/Over_1B_downloads_for_Angry_Birds.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GamasutraNews+%28Gamasutra+News%29

Not all are paid versions as it's free on Chrome and Android.....even if every version was free and brought in just 1p per copy through adverts then that's still a shit load of cash!

[T_M_C]

Amazing.   

Another example of a simple game idea that any one of us could write, that has taken off and had amazing success.

I wonder what the main reasons for it's success are.

I don't see it as a particularly amazing game myself.

TMC

[fog]

Another example of a simple game idea that any one of us could write, that has taken off and had amazing success.

I wonder what the main reasons for it's success are.

I don't see it as a particularly amazing game myself.

I think you've just said yourself why it has such widespread appeal.  It's a simple game with simple mechanics that anyone can pick up pretty much instantly.

It has a few other things going for it too mind.  The presentation and graphics are similarly designed to appeal to the masses.  Replace them with abstract neon vectors  or Crush the Castle, which Angry Birds basically copied, and see how many it sells.

For something so simple there are a number of really good bits of game design in there.  The little cartoon sequences between levels that explain what the new bird types do are a neat way of doing tutorials.  The gameplay itself is instantly rewarding to new players and yet still feels rewarding to skilled, experienced players.

Also I read that initially they didn't have the catapult in there to fire the birds with, but added it later as everyone knows how a catapult works so would instantly know how to play the game.  Stuff like that is really clever.

It's cool that you can learn something from such a seemingly basic game.

[T_M_C]

It's cool that you can learn something from such a seemingly basic game

Very true.

The reasons you give are very valid, but there are seem to be hundreds of other games which to me are equally well made but don't have nearly the same level of success.

I'm looking more at the psychology of people and how the game gained momentumn and became part of mainstream culture.

Pretty much like Minecraft.  Which again i didn't think was very special.

And it just snowballed from there.

TMC