Matthew Wilson, Director of Business Development at Rovio, shared his view on the current state of the mobile gaming industry at the White Nights St. Petersburg 2016 conference.
Wilson’s main idea was that at the current time, launching a game means launching a service, not a product. Release, in other words, the starting point of work on the game. This is because the market is crowded. There are more than a thousand games a day in the App Store. The average revenue of the game is $ 10 thousand, and the median income is $ 1 thousand.
Wilson said that the industry was gradually moving towards such a situation. The key points were the appearance of the App Store and Google Play (2008-2009), the release of the iPad (2010) and the appearance of the IAP (2011). In parallel with these stages, the market situation was also changing.
At the first stage – the stage when the stores were just opened – it was possible to make a good game, get a feature without any problems and eventually earn millions of dollars. The developer didn’t need anyone but the creative team.
Then the market became more competitive, but everything could still be achieved on their own. It was enough to have knowledge about marketing and how to buy users. The developer needed a publisher only when the game was fully ready.
These times are in the distant past, Wilson believes. And that’s why the developer and publisher should work as a team almost from the very beginning of the game.
