Windows Phone Store Games - 5% conversion without marketing

Games and entertainment applications for mobile devices are one of the most popular types of applications. The interest that developers are showing in this context to Windows Phone is quite understandable. The network has a lot of materials that reveal the secrets of developing games for this platform and, as practice shows, the threshold of entry for programmers is low enough for three, four weeks to master all the necessary tools. The important point here is the issue of return on investment. Will your game be able to earn the money you are counting on, how high is the competition on this platform, what is the percentage of conversion, what marketing efforts are required to promote the game? Not many companies dare to reveal such secrets and tell about their experience, but today you have the opportunity to learn about it first-hand from Playtox.

Our questions will be answered by Alexander Milkin , Playtox Partner Relations Manager.


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Alexander, what does Playtox currently represent ?
Playtox was established in 2009, and over the years has become a prominent player in Russia and the world. Today, Playtox games in Russia are more than 500,000 unique visitors per day, more than 50 million game hours spent in games and more than 30 million registered players.

For which platforms do you develop applications?
Technologically, our games are browser-based, they are adapted for mobile devices. You can play them from any mobile device and it is absolutely not important whether you are using an old Symbian OS phone or you have the latest iPhone.
Also, for the convenience of users, we have integrated the ability to login to games using basic social networks, and for users of modern devices (Android OS and Windows Phone), we are releasing versions for smartphones. These are special shells that use the capabilities of the native browser of the mobile device and facilitate access to the game.

How long have you been publishing your games in the Windows Phone Store ?
In November 2013, we released for Windows Phone 8.0 one of our hits “World of Shadows” and a little later, in December 2013, “My Farm” and “Fellowship”. Of course, we had some doubts that Windows Phone will show some good results, but the first two months after publication dispel all our doubts.

And what were the results?
In February 2014, we began to sum up the first results and were pleasantly pleased that, without making any efforts to market and promote our games, we received about 240,000 organic plants (My Farm, 35k, Bratva, 95k, Mir Shadows "- 110k). It should of course be borne in mind that our games are distributed according to the Fremium model, and the main mechanism of monetization is in-game purchases. It was very interesting that the conversion, that is, the percentage of those users who somehow began to spend money on the game, was 5%, which is a very high figure. For example, compared to Android, we actually began to earn ten times more relative to the number of installations. We were also pleased with the general financial results; in a rather short period, our income was about $ 50k.

Almost a year has passed since you released your first game, how are things at the moment?

At the moment, we have already launched 7 projects in Russia ( My Farm , Steel Legion , Brotherhood , World of Shadows , Docents , Generals , Zagrebaly) and the total number of downloads is approaching one and a half million . With an ARPU of around $ 1 and up, the Windows Phone LTV users can go up to $ 10.



What are your future plans for Windows Phone ?
Our applications show a steady increase in users, and we are very pleased that we are releasing our games on the Windows Phone platform. It is obvious that due to the youth of this platform, the competition among those who are ready to develop and port games is not high and this allows us to hope for future growth. In the near future we plan to transfer a few more games in order to expand the audience.