Rising prices in the App Store, the generosity of Amazon users, the effectiveness of advertising with the stars - and other news of the week for a mobile developer

App Store raised prices

Following the rise in prices for apple devices, the Russian App Store raises the cost of applications, games and in-app purchases. According to an Apple representative, these changes were made due to the depreciation of the ruble against the dollar. As a result, from December 19, the internal course of App Store looks as follows:

$ 0.99 - 62 rubles;
$ 1.99 - 123.99 rubles;
$ 2.99 - 185.99 rubles;
$ 3.99 - 242.35 rubles;
$ 9.99 - 618.09 rubles.
etc.
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Changes have so far affected only new applications, and old games and content can still be purchased at low prices.
I would like to remind you that as a result of the last price increase, the iPhone 6 can be bought from 53,990 rubles, and the price of the iPhone 6 Plus starts from 61,990 rubles.

With such a serious increase in prices, we can expect a sharp decrease in the demand for “golden” apples and, as a fact, a gradual decrease in the iOS audience in Russia.

World release of SimCity BuidIt

The epic city builder and founder of the SimCity genre is experiencing its rebirth on mobile devices. After a trial run in Canada, the game officially comes out on two platforms at once: iOS and Android.

The creators promised to review the game and adapt it for mobile devices. It is difficult to say how it was possible. The sensations of the game remain rather contradictory: on the one hand, the game is markedly different from all other site-builders, on the other - a very large influence of farms is felt, in particular, Hay Day. And instead of building a city a lot of time will have to spend on the game in the farm.

In any case, the game should pay attention to at least in order to evaluate the result and form your opinion.

Interesting facts about users in the Newzoo analytical report

The report showed that users of Amazon devices turned out to be the most generous over the past year. Among them, 64% spend money on mobile games. The shares of paying players on the iPad and iPhone are smaller and make up 57.1% and 47%, respectively. And by tradition, Android is significantly behind the number of users willing to pay for the game - only 36.5%.



Newzoo also found out how gender affects the willingness to make purchases in mobile applications. As seen in the charts, men pay an average of 25% more than women. This is provided that mobile games are equally popular with both sexes.

An interesting fact is that the share of players paying for mobile apps is approaching the same indicator for games on PCs and consoles. Over the past year, the total revenue of the entire mobile gaming industry was $ 25 billion, and, according to Newzoo, this number will only grow.

Messi was more effective than Kate Upton

Last week, EA began to broadcast a Christmas advertisement for FIFA 15. In a 50-second clip, football star Lionel Messi and Eden Hazard play each other over the network against the background of the gingerbread men singing the Christmas carol and other holiday items.

From December 5 to December 21, the video gained more than 2 million online views. And this figure is much better than the advertising of the Game of War game from Machine Zone, in which the American model Kate Upton was involved. For all the time the campaign with its help was able to collect only 2.5 million views, although advertising on TV and on the Internet was launched 2 weeks earlier than FIFA.
The reason for this difference may be the fact that Machine Zone has invested heavily in the television version of advertising, while advertising on the Internet is still more effective.

As of December 18, for the outgoing year, gaming companies spent about $ 675 million on television advertising.

Apple reminds of iOS 8 SDK and 64-bit support

From February 2015, any new application in order to get to the App Store should be compiled on iOS 8 SDK and support 64-bit code.

Apple recalls that before June 1, all applications and games already in the App Store must meet the new requirements. All these requirements were described earlier, in mid-October, and are no longer news, but they should be taken into account and not postponed the implementation for later!

The company recommends using the Standard Architecture setting in Xcode by default, so that the resulting application supports both 32-bit and 64-bit architecture.