by
Nitesh Patel
| 7月 11, 2013
“Old guard” mobile games developers regain market share by embracing free to play
Since 2006, total consumer spend on mobile games has skyrocketed due in large part to the formation of App Stores (iTunes, GooglePlay, etc.) and more smartphones entering consumer’s pockets. However during that same time period, the more established mobile game developers (EA, Gameloft and others) which largely relied on carriers for distribution, lost the stranglehold on mobile gaming as the market opened up to many new companies. The big winners recently have been the new entrants like Rovio with its Angry Birds games.
Over the last year Capcom was the top performer in terms of growth in Strategy Analytics’ mobile gaming index. The latest installment - 2013 Q1 Mobile Gaming Index – shows that for the first time since the launch of Apple's App Store in 2007, the total market share of the mobile games publishers we track (EA, Capcom, Com2Us, G5, Gamevil, Gameloft and Glu) showed an annual increase from 16.7% in 2012 to 18.4% in 2013.
How have they reversed the downward trend? Certainly it took a while for those companies to transition from carrier distribution to embrace app stores fully, but the best performers are re-establishing dominance by giving away games for free. The basic principle is attract users with a free game and monetize that game later with in-app purchasing, and that seems to resonate with consumers.
