Current statistics of casual game income

The weather in the Apple store is changing fast. No one is interested in forecasts for the past year. I would venture to tell you about my experience in developing casual games for the iPhone in the current 2014 of the Nativity.

Some statistics for tomorrow.

App Annie gathers data on 1,156,827 Apps and 289,377 Publishers in 155 Countries.

Over the past 2 years, the number of applications in the store has not increased. Million applications. Million someone's hopes for success, money, fame. During the same time period, the number of hopefuls doubled.
It is not surprising, because once a quarter the next message flies around the Earth! For 2 hours of development! Flappy Bird brings! A modest Vietnamese youth $ 50,000 a day!
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If there were no such wonderful stories, Apple would have to invent them. Thousands of new guys buy $ 100 development licenses and codes, codes, codes.

Here it is. And what about the reality? In fact, your application (good and easy) is waiting for the usual fate.

The fate of the usual, good application

So, you stuffed cones and became a guru in developing sparkling games - it takes 3-4 days to create the hit, friends stick to the game, the feedback is positive. The application is free, Review team approves the game for 5-10 days, and here is the result



Vertical - the number of downloads per day. Horizontally, the axis is heading towards death. Man is mortal, and you did not know, young geniuses?
On the first day, 50-100 people download the application.
On the second day - 25-50 people.
In the third - 12-25.
Everything. Next on the noise level.

Total for the year 100-200 people.
The situation varies somewhat with the season - a game laid out in November-December will have 500 players. In bad weather, we instinctively cling to the warm sides of our iPads .
How many hopeless games I have? Lot. More than 50. All of these applications have their own fans who are hacked into the game every day.
In the hungry rabbit , for example, play 4th Englishwoman. Probably the total company. I follow them through the server, where I arrange daily tournaments.
- What to do? How to earn your daily bread? ”Asks Shura Balaganov from Arbatov.

Without spending a penny? Write reviews, spin through Vkontakte, Facebook and Twitter .

The fate of the same application with a review on Habrahabr

Here is exactly the same application that came out on the same day, which coincides with the previous pixel in a pixel (except for the name)
Look! Another thing.


The first day of 1500 downloads and the same rapid fall. Why such a hole in the graph? I admit, in the free application Rio 2048 there was no advertising, and I decided to check how much it would work, being the price of one $ 1 dollar.
Here is the shopping schedule.



Both graphics perfectly correlate.

For this paid time, I fixed a couple of mistakes and made a couple of recommendations from the reviews. With the release of the new version, the program has become free again and the default is no ads.
I am grateful to habrazhiteli for benevolent reviews and a small number of attempts to break the game server to get to the first place.

The application is downloaded thanks to a good audience and buttons of social networks. More than 100 per day (today +175), and only guys from the countries of the former USSR. In any of the Top 100 in any category, the game could not get with so many downloads. Maximum - TOP500 in Ukraine and Russia.

Device statistics are as follows

Of the 10,000 players, exactly one third play on the iPad - 3333.
Players on the iPhone 5 - 4444.
Players on the iPhone 4 - 2222.

I estimated the number of players with the iPhone 4 and yesterday released the third version of the game, which included support for iOS 6.
In Russia, this is not extra people.

Little personal advice

In addition, in casual applications do not need to use the background ringtone. It consumes memory resources and annoys players who listen to their own iPod music while playing .

Because the only way

//     !! [OALSimpleAudio sharedInstance].allowIpod = YES; // Mute all audio if the silent switch is turned on. [OALSimpleAudio sharedInstance].honorSilentSwitch = YES; 

Now, I hope, comrade, who slapped a threesome for me instead of a five for turning off his music, will correct my review.

Achtung! The above version of the program is currently being checked in the store and is not available for download.

How much money will this application bring in a year?

$ 1000. Now it brings in $ 3 per day for 10,000 Admob requests at eCpm = $ 0.25. Do not be alarmed if the first time eCpm = $ 0.12. This is normal. Within a couple of months, the number of players will stabilize and eCpm will grow to $ 0.5 .

Where does advertising come from? The player himself turns it on if he wants to use the Undo button. Without the Undo button, a daily tournament cannot be won.

I set the maximum advertisement update time (120 seconds) so as not to annoy the player. Although, personally, I do not notice advertising. I'm afraid that without it I can not even play)

Someone grinned at the figure of $ 3 a day ?? Take a look at the first chart. Nobody forbids dreaming of a flappy bird in the sky. But do not forget about the bird in the hands. Did you work a week and received $ 1000 for the New Year? It is not enough? This is a very good programmer's bid. If we consider that by the next New Year this award will not decrease much. Although, for my taste, the lifetime of clones 2048 is not more than a year. Angri Birds - no more than a month, by the way. Or are you still chasing the birds?

Seasonal Applications

The second method of free promotion is the seasonal name of the application.
My applications Biathlon 2013 and Biathlon 2014 HD have the following shopping schedule during the Sochi Winter Olympics.



In confirmation of my words about seasonal bursts of shopping, I cite download statistics for the Biathlon 2013 application.



Look at the schedule - with the onset of winter and the start of the draw for the next Biathlon World Cup, the app is starting to buy. From the table below the graph it is clear that every winter the application earns $ 800.
Look for events, successful names for applications - and luck will smile at you.

Although my application bobsley does not have such success. But bobsleigh does not compare in popularity with biathlon.

For a snack

For lovers of math puzzles I have prepared a present. Gollumm My darling.
In short, I came up with and posted a new puzzle to the Apple store. All the fur-mat-chiki have not been out of the game for a week now. This is just a bomb. Alex K., who is serving a sentence in Microsoft , plays only her)
He called the game 2048 Solitaire . Mathematically proved that any solitaire converges in a finite number of moves, commensurate with the lifetime of the universe. I could not create a bot. Hope for local talent.



The game is free. For habrazhiteli have the ability to disable advertising. Cheating trick will publish on the day of approval of the game in the store.
Alex was able to collect the alignment id = 49 for 31 moves. This is just incredible.