Kabam invested $ 120 million, Tango focuses on games and a new mobile hit from the Japanese - the main mobile news of the week

Alibaba invested 120 million in Kabam

The Chinese company Alibaba has invested $ 120 million in the Kabam studio and, under the terms of the agreement, both companies start cooperation, under which Kabam will distribute its mobile games in China through the applications of Alibaba Group. Thus, Kabam gets access to a new market with a huge audience in China. Other details of the transaction have not yet been disclosed, but it is known that at the moment the assets of Kabam are estimated at $ 1 billion.

The head of Kabam, Kent Wakeford, expects the company to increase its revenue for the year to $ 550 million. Note that in 2013, the company's revenue was $ 360 million. The forecast is quite real, because the Asian market accounts for 50% of the gaming space, which is a strategic priority for the company.
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The deal also means that Alibaba intends to maximize the base before the initial placement of its shares on the stock exchange. Alibaba plans to hold an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "BABA". Experts believe that the IPO will allow the Chinese holding to raise about $ 20 billion, with a company valuation of $ 150-168 billion.

New Japanese Grossing Godzilla - Monster Strike

The Japanese top is one of the most interesting due to its dynamics and non-standard projects. Puzzle & Dragons still hold the first place, but competitors are not asleep. Recently, Mixi announced that their flagship project, Monster Strike, has scored 10 million installations in Japan and Taiwan. They are also close to making a deal with Tencent to distribute the game in China. The game sat down in second place in Japan grossing and desperately fights with the leader, occasionally bypassing it both in the App Store and in Google Play. The game helped the company to reach a new level, raising its value to 4 billion dollars. More details about the success of Monsters and the company Mixi link .

Tango: “Need more games!”

A messaging network with 200kk users - Tango - means that you should not joke with games. They recently received $ 280k from Alibaba (a Chinese giant, not a trickster from a fairy tale), and then hired Jim Ying as vice president of game publishing, and also donated 25kk dollars to invest in game developers around the world. It is clear that investments are made only for those who are ready to make or place their games under Tango.

Who is mister Jim Ying? He moved to a new job from GREE, where he would be vice president for publishing and partnerships. Prior to this, he is senior vice president of publishing at 6waves. In short, a man savvy in the vice presidency of game publishing. With such a serious backlog, Tango is going to develop his own playing field, plus he will create an internal game development team.

Messaging networks have received a large number of users, and are trying to make the most of this advantage. However, when placing a game in such a network, the developer gives from 20 to 30 percent of the net profit, plus an additional 30 percent to the platform on which the grid runs - Apple or Google. In such circumstances, attracting developers becomes a serious challenge. According to Tango, 70% of grid users play games, plus, in games, Tango users have two or even three times the LTV (lifetime value) compared to non-network users. Also, Mr. Ying said that Tango had developed an “attractive offer” for sharing profits for igrodelov, and the final percentages would depend on how well the game had manifested itself earlier. And for games with excellent performance, additional marketing channels will be used, off-grid. It also discusses direct investment and buying teams. More games, more features!

Study on the optimal length of the application name (many numbers and graphs)

Sturat Hall has prepared interesting data on the names used in the App Store applications, because no one knows how the issue mechanism works, the author has analyzed the top 200 applications in each category, so the data are quite representative. The author tried to find the dependence of the position in the rating on the length of the title and got the following picture:


The distribution is fairly uniform, the only rule that follows from this graph is that most use combinations of 1-7 words. In addition, the author reminds that the maximum length of the name in the App Store is 255 characters, although the same search on the iphone can normally display only 30 characters, in Google play it is similar, therefore most developers try to keep at this limit, by a banal change in the number of words in the name can hardly be achieved.
The author himself after analysis suggests the following set of rules when choosing a name:

• Try to look authoritative (no one takes the application with the names of 255 characters seriously)
• Try to keep a length of 2-7 words in the title.
• Try to convey the meaning of the application as much as possible in the title.
• Try to make a name that attracts attention without icons and screenshots.

In addition to the designated graphics, the author cites many more interesting statistics, so I advise you to look at the author's blog .