Study: 5% of Mobile Gamers Willing To Spend $50+

derGoldstein tips a story at AllThingsD about a study into mobile gamers' spending habits: "[The study] provides a fairly compelling argument as to why a developer should continue to give away his or her games for free ... After evaluating the spending habits of 3.5 million consumers across both iOS and Android, Flurry found that among those who pay for in-app transactions, greater than five percent will spend more than $50, which rivals the amount paid at retail for top console and PC games."

Comments

This means

[Dunbal]

95% are NOT willing to spend $50.

Re:This means

[Pieroxy]

Yes, but there are a whole lot more "gamers" on mobile phones than gamers in retails shops. So the 5% of gamers willing to pay $50 may very well be the same as the number of people actually paying for games in retail shops.

Re:This means

[hairyfeet]

Yes but in BOTH cases you are cutting out 95% of your potential audience by being a greedy twat! Look at how when Valve sold L4D for $2 they made more profit than the entire release had made up to that point simply because EVERYBODY bought it. With digital distribution bringing unit costs to zero one can sell at an impulse buy price and rake in mountains of cash, simply by not being greedy twats.

Hell I'll give an example from my own experience: I bought Kane & Lynch II. Why would I do that when one reviewer said "It sucks so much dicks it breathes spunk instead of air"? I bought it because it was $4 and at that price I figured I could easily get more than my money's worth if no other way than laughing at it like a bad movie. And you know what? I didn't feel ripped off, in fact I thought it was worth the money and got my $4 out of it in MP and once I put in the hack that got rid of the stupid censoring of nudity and headshots I felt I got my $4 out of SP too.

If you set the price low enough you can make mountains of cash but the sheer greed of the industry, their "Lets see how much we can bleed these fuckers for!" attitude is frankly cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. Digital distribution opens up a whole new world of profit to game publishers which allows them to have infinite copies for zero added cost. If more would stop being greedy twats and put games at impulse prices, I would say $20 or less for a start and below $10 after 6 months, then frankly they would see their profits skyrocket just as Valve did on L4D as the games would be so popular practically everyone would have it. This not only makes you mountains of money on the game itself but gives you an audience for sequels and other properties which you can make even more mountains of cash off of.

But instead they'll charge $50+ for the game, nickel and dime the living shit out of the player by wanting another $30-$40 to get all the DLC, most of which was ripped from the game, and then when the games sells a pittance compared to projections they'll blame it all on "piracy" instead of accepting the fact that trying to assrape your customers in a dead economy isn't a sound business plan.

Re:This means

[Lexical_Scope]

With digital distribution bringing unit costs to zero one can sell at an impulse buy price and rake in mountains of cash, simply by not being greedy twats.

This.

I probably own 25 games from http://www.gog.com/ and another 15-20 from Steam which I mainly bought because the price was somewhere south of a Big Mac and fried. I probably only played Cannon Fodder for 2 hours or so, but for a couple of dollars I couldn't care less.

I also buy a lot of older PS3 games second-hand, the most recent being Oblivion and Bioshock 1+2 (total cost: £12). I think by comparison the last full-price "AAA" title I bought was probably Half-Life 2.

I generally avoid games that involve microtransactions but I think they are perfectly valid as a business model provided they don't affect game balance. In the words of the bloke from Extra Credit you should allow players to buy convenience, but not power. If I can pay to level faster or get gear more easily, that's good...if I can pay for items or abilities unavailable to free players, that's bad.

Re:This means

[edwdig]

The real point is: Are you better off selling 20 000 units of a $50 games or 2 000 000 units of a $0.5 games? The sheer visibility bonus of the second option alone makes me believe it's a better option.

Keep in mind that you now have to provide support for 100x the number of users. If you're making a simple iPhone game that doesn't interact with anything else it's probably not a big deal. If you try that on PC, or in a game with a significant online component, you're going to be overwhelmed by the increased support costs.

Re:This means

[hairyfeet]

Nice to see I'm not the only one that does that, makes me think I'm not a dumbass for doing so. I'm up to something like 35 games in GOG right now and I've played MAYBE 12 of those, most for less than an hour if that. Between Amazon, Steam, and GOG I've bought more games in the past 6 months than I had in the ENTIRE 5 years beforehand. Like you thanks to being DRM free I have no worries (I keep all the files on an external 1Tb drive so they are always on hand) and their sales prices as you said are a full game for less than a Big Mac and a coke.

I just don't understand why publishers don't get this. Impulse buying is an incredibly powerful force that will often garner you sales you would have NEVER gotten before. look at me with Kane & Lynch II. Here is a game with absolutely horrible reviews, yet I still whipped on my CC and bought it, why? Because at $4 it was so cheap I couldn't resist and it is THAT effect they need to be shooting for.

All this "Lets see how badly we can fuck our customers LOL!" bullshit just isn't gonna cut it anymore. Frankly in the last 3 years I haven't bought a single game for $50 and I have NO intention of ever doing so again. Why should I, when there are so many games out there I haven't played in the under $20 impulse buy column frankly there aren't enough hours in the day to even play them all.

So stop being greedy twats game publishers and watch the money truck back up to your door. Continue trying to assrape your customers? Well there are plenty of companies happy to take my $5 that I don't need you and I have a feeling the market well show this to be the case. $50 in a dead economy isn't just greedy, its insulting.

Re:In-Game Purchases

[BasilBrush]

In game purchases indeed.The "Study" is done by Flurry, an analytics company that market a system for in game currency.

In other news, McDonalds say that 90% of customers are willing to finish off their burger meal with a desert.

5% of gamers maybe. But not even for 5% of games

[Opportunist]

Let's be honest here: 99.9something percent of the mobile games are nothing but more or less creative implementation of various flash games available from various flash game sites, mixed with cheap knockoffs and "kinda-sorta-like" versions of well known PC and console games.

50 bucks for that? Dream on!

I honestly wonder if those 5 percent think that 50 bucks would be a sensible price for Angry Birds and ... hell, whatever flavor of tower defense is the game of the month.

Re:In-Game Purchases

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Actually if you read the report, it's saying the opposite.

It's like an analyst saying, "5% of your customers will buy this ridiculous upsell, do not shove it in their face. Be reasonable with your expectations with inapp purchases."

Re:Will Pay for Quality!

[edwdig]

A $50 game at Gamestop translates to $22 wholesale. If the developer got 15% that means they only get $3.30 a game. They don't need to be selling the game on mobile at $50 to make back their money.

In an arrangement like that, the publisher is going to be funding development up front. The developer gets a small cut because the publisher is taking the financial risk. Even if that game bombs, the developer received enough money to cover operating expenses for the development cycle.

If the developer is willing to self fund, they can get a much better percent of the sales.

People, RTFA

[gurps_npc]

The idea behind this article is that, people are willing to pay $50+ in game, IF THE GAME IS FREE TO DOWNLOAD AND USE

In other words, it is a micro-payment scheme. Give the main game away for free (like say Bloons, or Farmville), then charge people for add-ons.

The 95% of people that want the game but won't pay, get what they want. A playable game for free.

The 5% of people willing to pay for extra's, will pay a lot of money for them, far exceeding the small payments they could have gotten if they charged to download/continued use of the game.