Virtual reality as a trend, a new report from App Annie, not a word about Apple Watch - and other news of the week for a mobile developer

Birds broke into virtual reality

The Finnish company Rovio continues to search for itself in various forms and genres. This time the studio announced a game using virtual reality. Rovio made a statement that there would be a VR game in the Angry Birds universe a year ago, but then it turned out to be an April Fool's rally.

This time everything is serious: at the Rock in Rio USA festival held in Las Vegas, the company demonstrated a demo version of its game, the heroes of which were all the same birds, but not in profile, but with a third-person view. No pigs and destruction - the game will be another racing simulator in the Angry Birds universe, but whether the VR performance will help make the project more successful than the other race from the Finns Angry Birds GO! True, not before the release of the consumer version of the Oculus Rift in 2016.
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If the project is still launched, then Angry Birds will become the second after Temple Run series of popular mobile games, adapted for virtual reality devices.

Japanese gamers play 3 times more American

The Asian market of mobile games not only overtakes the western one in terms of installations and revenues, but also in another, equally important parameter - time spent in games. According to a new report from AppAnnie, Asian countries are the undisputed market leaders, who are unlikely to catch up with anyone in the near future.

The Japanese make 3 times more sessions than Americans and 7.5 times more than players from the UK. In second place in the ranking are gamers from South Korea, who are only slightly behind the Japanese.

Interestingly, Android users from Europe and the US tend to spend more time on Social apps than on games.

Monster Strike earns $ 3.8 million per day

Japanese battler Monster Strike brought the company mixi more than $ 333 million in the last quarter of 2014, which is about $ 3.8 million per day! At the moment, the project is officially released in Japan, Taiwan, North America, South Korea, Hong Kong and Macau. The closest and main competitor, GungHo, on all of its projects, including Puzzle & Dragons, earns $ 4.5 million a day, but at the current moment in the Japanese Puzzle & Dragons sticks to the 1-2 position Monster Strike, which is already firmly on the first place

Now it’s hard to find numbers to compare the revenues of both companies for the last quarter of 2014, in which, perhaps, mixi is already ahead of GungHo. Total mixi earned $ 927 million for the entire 2014, which is 829% more than in 2013. The company's revenue also grew very significantly - from $ 1.9 million to $ 275.4 million. Next year, the company plans to achieve revenue of $ 1.54 billion and revenue of $ 434 million.

Ubisoft plans to seriously engage in VR-games

Adherents of virtual reality is becoming more and more. More or less adequate iron is already available and is actively developing, and finally the necessary driver appeared - the major game publishers showed interest.

Not so long ago, Ubisoft admitted that they believed in the promise of VR and, moreover, even started developing several games.
Well, this is great news for all players who want to get a new experience. The first strong brand will trigger the active growth of the new market. It is worth waiting for that other publishers will soon make similar statements, and there already indie teams will catch up.

Sega will remove some of its games from the App Store

In the near future, SEGA intends to remove some of its games from Google Play, the App Store and Amazon, which, according to them, do not meet modern standards. In some sources there is information that these games will be sent for revision and then they can return to the stores, although the cost may increase, but this is doubtful, since it is not necessary to remove it from public access to update the game, but simply posting update.

What kind of games are we talking about - SEGA does not specify. You can find more than a hundred projects under the SEGA label in the mobile stores, and most of them are budget ported classic games. If all these games disappear from the pages, then SEGA will have quite a few active projects, and if they intend to return them all after completion - how much time can it take and is it really possible at all ?!

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