The performance of Zynga’s stock in the almost two years since its IPO has chilled public markets ambitions for gaming companies. But two Western gaming developers, both of which have capably navigated a transition from Facebook (and other web-based platforms) to mobile, currently contend for the distinction of most likely to undertake the first post-Zynga [...]
(The model referenced throughout this post can be downloaded here) Supercell’s recent $100mm secondary financing round raises some interesting questions about how mobile game developers capitalize on a hit game. A title in the Top 10 grossing chart for the US can, as evidenced by a number of recent high-profile examples, generate upwards of $500,000 [...]
The last country covered in the three-part overview of mobile gaming in Asia is Japan, which is fitting given the recent buzz around GungHo Entertainment, the Tokyo-based developer behind Puzzle & Dragons: last week it was reported that Japanese telecommunications firm SoftBank purchased a 58.5% stake in GungHo for $265 million. GungHo’s nearly half a [...]
The macro trend playing out in mobile gaming over the past six months has been the shift away from casual gaming toward the mid-core experience: niche games driving high ARPU values through extended retention profiles and engagement metrics. You know a trend has breached the public consciousness when Forbes writes about it, which it did [...]
The data-driven nature of the freemium model changes the way certain functional groups interact with each other during the product design and development process. Because analytics is a revenue driver and not a cost center in freemium, it isn’t implemented after a product launch as a means to reduce losses. Rather, the initialization of analytics [...]
Last week I participated in a panel at Casual Connect called “Emerging Strategies to User Acquisition”. I was honored to share the stage with Jussi Laakkonen from Applifier, Stefan Bielau, Erlend Christoffersen from Supercell, Gilad Rotem from InGaming, and Billy Shipp from Iddiction. Below you’ll find a video of the entire panel, which clocks in at [...]
(Dashboard template can be found here; source code on GitHub here) In freemium mobile, my experience has been that the principles of the Minimum Viable Product as a product strategy are respected but sometimes necessarily abandoned because the concept isn’t perfectly transferable to mobile platforms. The MVP approach was designed for a platform (the web) that allows [...]
It should be obvious to anyone operating in the mobile space that app discovery is ripe for disruption: slide four from MoPub’s recent 4th Quarter Mobile Advertising Marketplace Report illustrates how rapidly eCPMs are rising on both iOS and Android (the entire report is worth reading).
Download the model here (updated 20-03-2013) As free-to-play transitions from an emerging, vaguely defined abstraction into the dominant business model on mobile, developers will face an increasing need to understand the concept from an analytical standpoint. I spent some time this weekend thinking about how free-to-play games generate revenue: what mechanics converge to deliver positive ROI on the [...]
One of the most frequently levied criticisms against the free-to-play model is its low intrinsic conversion rate: most players (usually more than 95%) will never monetize. In trying to increase revenues, are developers of free-to-play games better served by increasing conversion or by increasing the average revenue per paying user (ARPPU)?
