Kabam absorbs, India attracts, and Zynga puts everything on mobile apps - the main mobile news for the week

Kabam bought the authors Underworld Empire for $ 90 million

Kabam, known to all for its successful game Kingdom of Camelot, bought one of the notable players in the mobile gaming market - the studio Phoenix Age. For 3 years of its existence, Phoenix Age has released 2 successful titles: Castle Age and Underworld Empire.

Castle Age was launched on iOS in 2011 (the game publisher, by the way, was Kabam), immediately broke into Top Grossing US and has not yet left the top 100 most earning games of the American App Store. Underworld Empire, launched in 2012 on its own, is currently in the Top 20 Grossing of the American side.
')
At the time of purchase studio staff is 44 people. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. According to rumors that Kabam paid $ 90 million. It is also known that the talk about the sale began 2 years ago.

Besides the “human resources”, Kabam gets two successful games and the opportunity to diversify its product line: the new game is already under development.

Edwin Shew, co-founder of Phoenix Age, said: “We are extremely excited about the upcoming joining of Kabam. Having become part of this team, we got instant access to experience, experience and infrastructure that will help bring our games to a truly world level. On our own, we could not have achieved such a scope. ”

As you can see, one of our forecasts has already begun to come true. In the first two months, two successful companies with revenues of tens of millions of dollars a year were bought by other more successful companies with revenues of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It's only the beginning.

Mobile developers are advised to pay attention to India

In his article, TheNextWeb author argues why developers should definitely enter the Indian market of mobile applications and games.

1. By the end of 2014, there will be as many smartphone owners in India as there are people living in Australia, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan and the UK combined.
2. According to optimistic estimates, India will overtake the US in the number of smartphone owners this year.

But if we talk about the number of smartphones, then the market leader is China. In addition, income in China is much higher. What is India more attractive to the developer than China?

The introduction of products to the Chinese market is still a big adventure for the developer. Entry threshold is quite high. China has its own limitations, rules for publishing applications, difficulties in promoting products, language barriers, cultural differences. This does not mean that China should be ignored. This means that entering the Chinese market requires a lot of effort, time and money. In India, everything is easier. At least for now.

India calmly “speaks” in English, Western services and games are familiar to Indian players, there are no restrictions on launching games and online services. Unlike China, all global application distribution channels are available and widely used in India. The important point is that in the local market there is no competition from such giants as Tencent or Baidu for China, who were able to reach a critical mass among consumers and do not give a chance to other market players.

But what about the income? According to the author of the article, the monthly ARPPU of Android applications is $ 2. It’s a lot or a little - decide for yourself :)

Zynga announced a new strategy. Mobility is our everything!

Zynga COO Clive Downie (Clive Downie) in his message thanked the players who have been playing the games of the company for 6 years, and shared their immediate plans for Zynga.

The report says that over the past 6 years, more than 1 billion people have played games at the company!

In the near future, Zynga will bet on three “new games”! This is FarmVille 2: Country Escape, New Zynga Poker, New Words With Friends, which will be launched in the coming months. Zynga decided not to invent anything new and get out of a steep dive on improved versions of their old successful titles. Note that the old hits are doing “not really”. Last year, the monthly active audience of Zynga Poker was almost halved.

How much is a mobile developer in different regions of the planet

We came across an interesting report on the cost of mobile developers in different regions of the world. Data is given in dollars per hour.



As you can see, if you want to work with good developers from North America, then be prepared to pay from 100 to 125 + $ per hour. If we talk about South America, it is $ 30 - $ 75, in India - $ 30 - $ 50.

The report says nothing about Europe, but the authors give a valuation of $ 50 - $ 150 in the western part of the old world and $ 25 - $ 50 in the eastern part. Our estimates for the latter indicator are consistent with the authors of the study.

Microsoft will launch Xbox Live on iOS and Android

Microsoft is going to develop a platform for the introduction of Xbox Live functionality on iOS and Android. Xbox Live has the smallest user base among other gaming social networks. As of the end of October 2013, 48 million users were registered with the service, while on Steam there were 65 million active accounts, and PlayStation Network - 110 million. For comparison, Apple has more than 200 million registered accounts in the Game Center.

Earlier, Microsoft has already tried to introduce Xbox Live functionality into competitors' mobile platforms. In December 2012, the company released a version of the Wordament game for iOS with the ability to achieve achievements by logging in to Xbox Live. In October 2013, a similar version of Wordament appeared on Android.

Microsoft is still trying to take an increasingly important place in the mobile industry and is taking various steps. Let's see what happens.