World release of Boom Beach, platform war and GDC trends - the main mobile news of the week

Supercell's Boom Beach game is now available in all countries.

On March 25th, the Boom Beach game from Supercell came out of soft lunch and became available in all countries of the world. Prior to this, the application, released in early November 2013, could only be downloaded in Canada and Australia. Last month, Boom Beach confidently kept in the list of five games that bring the greatest profits to their developers. Less than a week after the world release, and Boom Beach is already on the top of the charts around the world, the USA - 5th place, Great Britain - 5, Russia - 3 (iPhone charts).


There is no doubt that Boom Beach is a new super successful product from Supercell. This company again managed to repeat its success.

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Games account for 4 out of 10 app downloads on Google Play

Analytical company Distimo has published data on the new popularity of different categories of applications on Google Play. According to data for February 2014 (the analysis was conducted for all countries), the category “Games” accounted for 41.2% of all user downloads.



For comparison, the next most popular categories of Communication and Tools were at 7.6% and 7.2%, respectively. The paper also states that the highest revenue growth - both in the Apple App Store and Google Play - was demonstrated by applications in the categories Finance and Sport. The success of the latter category is explained by the past Olympic Games in Sochi, which caused a surge of interest in sports applications. On the Distimo website you can download the full report for free.

3 main gaming trends based on past GDC results

The participants of the GDC conference make several interesting conclusions , based on which one can imagine the situation in the mobile gaming market in the near future.

1. The rapid development of devices and the market.

Mobile devices are developing rapidly, approaching the performance of consoles of the previous generation. Some solutions even outperform the console. Thus, the development of games that will use the capabilities of iron with might and main, will require considerable effort to create content. Games will become more difficult, their cost will increase.

Success stories of some companies, impressive revenues of mobile giants will attract more and more specialists in this area. Competition will increase, for small indie teams the situation will worsen. Small games will still have a number of advantages, for example, easy accessibility. But the farther, the wider the channels, the more powerful the glands, the heavier the batteries :) Improving mobile devices will allow you to download serious games content without any problems, interest in simple applications will fall, although, of course, it will not completely disappear.

In addition, we should expect that the publishers of games on PCs and consoles will increase their pressure on the mobile market - they simply can not ignore the possibilities of the mobile platform. They have a lot of experience in creating good games, the only thing that can hold up their expansion for a while is the f2p model, for which not everyone is rebuilt quickly and seamlessly. But sooner or later this problem will be solved. As shown by Dungeon Keeper, even the presence of an established fan base, accustomed to the rules of the original series of games, does not interfere with the mobile version of the project to develop successfully. We are waiting for new old titles :)

2. F2p walks on platforms

The owners of large gaming platforms are interested in the success of the f2p model in the mobile market and plan to pay more and more attention to it, so launching well-known f2p titles on consoles is only the first steps. We are waiting for interesting announcements from Sony and Microsoft. I wonder how much time they need to accustom console users to this model?

Each of us uses mobile phones. Players preferring platforms from Sony and Microsoft have probably come across f2p before. Over time, games on the f2p model will be released more and more often, so I believe that users will sooner or later surrender and will take the f2p model as a given.

3. Virtual Worlds

The success of Oculus Rift has attracted the attention of large companies that are starting to try their hand at developing projects for virtual reality. Oculus has shown that the time for such devices has come. In the near future, we are waiting for a real war in this market.

Many say that Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift is against crowdfunding principles. Thousands of fans around the world are unhappy, the famous Notch stopped the development of a special version of Minecraft for this VR helmet. But you have to admit that with Facebook capabilities, Oculus has much more chances in the upcoming battle of VR devices.

Facebook, of course, is not going to engage in charity - at the last moment, the company saw huge opportunities that virtual reality devices can provide to their platform. Now Facebook will do everything to ensure that this technology has the maximum distribution.

iOS vs. Android, world war. Battle map!

We found for you an exponential map (http://bit.ly/1lm0bSR) with information on the popularity of Andoroid and iOS devices in different countries of the world. Based on data on the use of browsers on mobile devices. Black shows countries where iOS is used more often and green indicates Android. Countries marked in gray were not included in the analysis.

The data confirms the well-known trends. Android won the war in 67 countries, Apple - in 34. However, it must be borne in mind that Apple remains the leader in key countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, France.

Detailed statistics for each country can be found here .

Tencent earned $ 100 million in mobile gaming in the fourth quarter of 2013

Chinese Internet giant Tencent reported on its success for 2013. The company's revenue for this period was $ 9.9 billion, which is 38% higher than last year. Profit increased by 22%, reaching $ 2.5 billion.

As for mobile games, here the company is also doing well. Tencent says that in the fourth quarter of 2013, mobile games on the QQ and WeChat platforms have earned a total of about $ 100 million.