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Top 1% of iOS Game Developers Make a Third of All Revenue
donniebaseball23 writes "The top one percent of iOS game developers earn over a third of the gaming revenue made on the App Store, according to a new survey of iOS developers. The survey, set up by Canadian indie developer Owen Goss, found that the bottom 80 percent of iOS developers are splitting a mere three percent of all App Store game revenue."
80% of IOS (and android) games/apps are rubbish and nobody wants to waste money on them.
In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet.
One would say there are easier methods, that are more objective. Like: take the statistics provided by the app store on number of downloads, the price of the app (if not free), and from that you have the revenue.
It's normal that the top 20% takes 80% of sales. Like 20% of the products in a typical supermarket create 80% of turnover. Though in the app market it may be even more skewed.
A third of all the kids play the top 1% of iOS games.
I play PC games. Give me a call when you make a decent one. That is what phones are for.
I play Angry Birds and the other 1% top games on my iPhone and just finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution on max difficulty on my PC, I don't see the big contradiction in that. The games on my phone are to pass time, I'm not expecting a huge game experience for $1 and I don't think the small screen and touch interfaces could provide one either. It's just there in my pocket every time I got 5 minutes to waste and I just grab something from the top 25 - sometimes top 100 - because they're probably decent then. Usually I go straight for the pay games with no in-game payments, because freemiums and those that try to milk you through in-game stores are plain annoying. The only frustrating thing is that Apple's icons are plain fraudulent, there are apps with in-game stores and purchases yet don't carry the "+" sign in the store like the Mighty Eagle in Angry Birds. I don't mind that they do, just be honest about it. Apple should just block any app that doesn't carry that sign from calling any purchasing API at all.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Every app developer pays Apple 30%.
That's alot more than can be said about our federal tax laws which are more like a record of bribery and scams than a rational tax code.
Google dodges taxes using techniques known as the "Double Irish" and the "Dutch Sandwich" to reduce its tax rate to 2.4 percent.
citation provided
Except the App store is the only playing field of iOS and it isn't as level as you seem to think. Apps that get promoted by Apple within the store get a massive increase in sales, often propelling them into the top 10 / top 50. Top 10 / top 50 apps are naturally bought a lot more than others so they tend to stay in the top charts. Apps that don't get promotion by Apple languish in the depths of the App Store.
This wouldn't be such an issue if the App Store was organised better with better categories, or filters instead of having to endlessly hit "show me more" to get another screen of icons with no real info about what the game is. At the moment the order of apps is based on a combination of sales and star rating which wouldn't be so bad if the star ratings weren't so misleading (obligatory xkcd).
Well it is also the situation of production value. If you look at the app store, then you have 100 clones of one existing successful program, with myriads of developers trying to cash in on the same concept.
Those really getting money are either ones
a) with very high production value
b) with a very good concept and good implementation which has not been cloned to death
Its as easy and as hard as that. I just wonder who is constantly buying all the canabald clones all the zombie shooter clones and hidden object games which come out a dime a dozend every week?
Obviously someone must do it otherwise they would not come out anymore.
Actually, the plus symbol has nothing to do with in-app purchases. It denotes universal apps -- apps which will run on the iPhone or iPod Touch as well as the iPad.
It is wildly popular - you only have to look at Apple's in-store lists where you can list the top 20 apps by revenue - a year or so after TomTom satnav came out it was holding second place as the highest revenue generator (it sold for £60 initially in the UK store) with the number one being Angry Birds (at £0.59).
I think pretty much everyone buys it, because it is a very fun game that is easy to pick up and put down - it's pretty much the sweet spot for a mobile game. Certainly other games have managed that, but none have been quite as successful as Angry Birds.
As of today, in the UK store Angry Birds is number 4:
1. Fifa 12 (EA)
2. WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp inc) [cross platform messenger system for iOS/Android/BB]
3. Where's My Water (Disney)
4. Angry Birds
5. Flick Champions
6. World of Goo HD
He's AC, they rarely say anything worth mentioning. Best to ignore all AC posts, makes life simpler and more enjoyable.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
More to the point, app developers pay 30% on their GROSS RECEIPTS. If the US switched to a gross receipts tax rather than an income (personal) or profit (corporate) tax, many of the loopholes and dodges would disappear entirely and a flat rate would likely be in the single-digit percentages.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
One would say there are easier methods, that are more objective. Like: take the statistics provided by the app store on number of downloads, the price of the app (if not free), and from that you have the revenue.
It's normal that the top 20% takes 80% of sales. Like 20% of the products in a typical supermarket create 80% of turnover. Though in the app market it may be even more skewed.
But that is where the stats would fail. Many of the free based games are ad-supported and make money off of that. You would not be capturing that large demographic.
I see you aren't a programmer either. Until is a conditional too. As in
until (programmer.hobby_income >= enough_to_survive_on) or programmer.is_dead
{
programmer.make_games_for_fun();
}
which is totally what she said
The math works like this...
Apple: Government
Top 1%: "Job creators"
Bottom 80%: The poor saps
Apple takes 33% from 100% of all developers.
USA: Government
Top 1%: "Job creators"
Bottom 80%: The "poor" ([rolls eyes] have you visited Bolivia? Somalia? Haiti?)
USA takes 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35% from citizens -- generally, depending on income level.
The highest tax brackets have been in decline since 2000:
1993–2000: 39.6%
2001: 39.1%
2002: 38.6%
2003–2007: 35%
Coincidently, so have incomes for the bottom 80% of US citizens (especially if one considers cost increases e.g. health care, interest rates on personal credit).
Um, no. In America the top 1% pay 38% of all Income Tax and a really huge percentage of all revenue the government takes in from the other taxes that mostly hit the wealthy such as the Alternative Minimum Tax Capital Gains, Estate, etc . The top 50% supply 97% of all personal tax revenue to the Federal Governent. The bottom half pay 3%. Most in the bottom half come out ahead, even factoring in FICA due to the Earned Income Tax Credit and other income redistribution schemes.
So since you didn't know any of this I give you a pass for thinking the rich aren't paying 'their fair share.' But I must ask you, and any other Progs reading, to once and for all go on the record and tell me what you think 'their fair share' should be. Stop the talking points and demagoguery and put a real number on it. What percentage of a persons income, no matter how rich, no matter if earned or trust fund baby, OR total wealth, do you think YOU are entitled to have redistributed away from them. Or even more bluntly, what percentage of a person's labor is their own and to what extent are they your slave?
If you don't like my slavery formulation you are welcome to propose another.. if you can. Yes the State has a legit power to tax but only for the legitimate objects of government, defense, public works and infrastructure, courts, etc.
Democrat delenda est
I'll tell you what I believe, though I can't speak for all "Progs".
I believe that 'harder' work should always yield better income than less work; I believe that someone making $1.5 million/year should take home more than someone making $0.5 million/year. Nothing too radical there, I believe.
I believe that once you start getting into higher income brackets, it should be exponentially more difficult to take home even more money. Sure, you can make an extra $million/year, and a percentage of it *will* go into your pocket, but you won't be taking home all of it, or even most of it. According to you, this will make it so all the rich just give up and go homeless or move to Somalia or some other bullshit. I believe we should tax the fuck out of large estates when the person/couple who built the estate dies. I disagree that taxation equals slavery; THAT is a talking point and demagoguery.
The *reason* I want vast sums of wealth taxed out of existence is that wealth has a huge, distorting effect on a) the free market, b) the economy in general, and c) politics (which then enables further distortions on a and b). I believe that NOBODY should be able to live on compound interest for generations. I believe that there should be no entrenched entities (Rockefellers, Carnegies, Bushes, Kennedys) that are essentially guaranteed to be inter-generational major players unless somebody REALLY fucks up. If someone has to keep working to keep their wealth, I see that as a GOOD thing; not just the one-hit wonder musician that is able to live off of royalties for their entire lives, but also the trial lawyer who wins a class action lawsuit and takes home millions -- it's great that they accomplished something good, now keep doing it if you want to keep living high on the hog.
The thing you have to remember, and seem to fail to understand, is that everybody works. I know in the minds of many people, anyone that isn't making $100k/year is some sort of fucking parasite that would be better off just euthanized, but believe it or not I think that the janitor working 40 hours per week should make a wage that allows them to live a comfortable life. I believe that someone flipping burgers or working behind a cash register for 40 hours per week shouldn't be treated like some second class citizen that has to scrape by just to pay rent. I don't think that just because you didn't go to school to get a law degree or become an engineer that you should be doomed to live hand-to-mouth for your entire life. I don't think that if someone making subsistence wages decides to splurge and, say, pay for cable or a (heaven forbid!) cell phone, they should be demonized for not saving every fucking penny they have. (Which will just be depreciated to worthlessness anyway over a few years) Sure, the person who chose to go to school should be rewarded somehow -- maybe they can afford the Lexus instead of the Honda, or can buy a slightly nicer house or whatever they choose to spend their extra cash on; but NOBODY deserves to make hundreds or thousands of times what the average person does.
I believe we have *plenty* of resources in this country: we're tearing down houses because nobody can afford to live in them -- not because nobody *wants* to live in them, but because nobody can *afford* to live in them. We have plenty of food -- when was the last time you heard about a famine in the US? We have plenty of cars -- the government just bought a bunch to destroy to get people to buy new ones. We have plenty of gas -- I've never been unable to get my car filled up, and I'll bet you haven't either. We have enough manpower to get things done, there is enough concrete and asphalt to make/repair all the roads we want, we have materials to build the structures we need. We have enough resources to go around. We have enough *tangible* things that nobody should ever go hungry or not be able to make rent. What we don't have is "money," which is a completely abstract concept that we essentially use to determine who gets access to
Jesus was a liberal
What percentage of a persons income, no matter how rich, no matter if earned or trust fund baby, OR total wealth, do you think YOU are entitled to have redistributed away from them. Or even more bluntly, what percentage of a person's labor is their own and to what extent are they your slave?
If you really want a fair number, I guess it would be appropriate to divvy up a person's wealth between how much of it they earned themselves through hard work and how much of it was earned by leveraging societal constructs, no? Assuming nobody (including society at large) has ownership a patch of a land, or the resources on that land, and I go there and kill an elk with my bare hands, I can argue that nobody else should be able to take any of it from me.
But, that's not really the world we live in, is it? If your business ships products, you use the roads, rail, harbors, or air terminals that we all share. If you became wealthy by hiring good employees who were educated by a public school system, you really benefit from societies' hard work. If you were able to build appropriate plants/office space due to the fact that you live in a stable society, then you are getting rich on the backs of millions of people's hard work. So, I guess if you are wealth because you are a captain of industry, or a banker, or an entertainer, or a politician it wouldn't be out of line to tax you at near 100%, because everything you've earned is predicated on the business environment you are working within.
Put another way, if you removed 1975 Bill Gates from this earth and dropped him onto another habitable planet with no intelligence species but animals similar to those on earth, who will lose out most? I kind of think if he weren't around someone else would have built a comparably successful company (maybe better for all than MS, maybe worse). But Bill G on the other hand would be decimated.
FWIW, I don't really believe in 100% taxation. My gut tells me that somewhere around 50% is where you cross the line from potentially reasonable to exploitation. But, that's informed by my own societal pressures, so there's no really definitive way to say that's right. I guess what you'd like to see is proof about what levels of taxation make society at large wealthier. E.g. if 0% tax produces -1% GDP gains, 5% tax 1% gains, 15% tax 3% gains, 25% tax 4% gains, 35% tax 3% gains, 45% tax 2% gains, etc...then you could just look at that chart and say we should probably pick the 25% rate because that creates the most wealth. I haven't seen research for that though, but would love to if it exists.