Sorry about the eye-chart, simply click on the image above to see a bigger version.I compiled this little spreadsheet for kicks (and 'cause I haven't looked at the AppStore in awhile) based on iTunes data for all the major games publishers I could remember on a random Wednesday morning (let me know who I'm missing). These stats are for iPhone and iPod touch games only, not iPad and are for the US version of the store. BTW, I've heard a lot of folks whine that Apple will occasionally, indiscriminately erase Customer Ratings during version upgrades... making these numbers a poor indicator of App performance. OK, I'm not sure if that's true (and shame on Apple if it is), but if you believe it you can take those numbers with an appropriate grain of salt. That said, here are my initial observations based on this data:
- British publisher Chillingo (including its Clickgamer subsidiary) is a friggin' powerhouse!... with a plethora of titles and more than a couple superstars, they might well be generating more topline revenue than any other games publisher on this platform, right?
- Digital Chocolate has a large number of titles, but almost 50% are free and it doesn't look like their top paid title is a superstar
- The recently combined entity of ngmoco/Freeverse is a major player
- I bet Lima Sky is the most profitable iPhone games publisher... Tapulous & Ludia would be contenders but their 3rd party licensing costs have gotta be substantial
- At first blush, Disney's recent Tapulous buy looks pretty genius (Tap Tap is a juggernaut), but their success isn't exactly a fresh story and they do have some of the traits of a one (or two) hit wonder... we'll have to see
- The distinction between paid and free apps will become less meaningful as freemium products, featuring in-app purchases, become more the norm on the platform... but for now most free apps are simply barkers for their paid compadres
- Happy to see that I-play (which has been dead quiet in the press lately) is making a pretty decent go of it relative to some of its mid-tier, old-timer peers and that my favorite film-based license (Fast & Furious) is still their trophy title
- Firemint is awesome, but it's definitely time for their next big thing
Let me know what you all think.
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PopCap would be interesting
ReplyDeleteHey Jon - was shocked to see that they only had 5 titles avail for iPhone. Bejeweled, Plants vs Zombies & Peggle have all been pretty solid performers... looks like a quality over quantity strategy, which is nice if they can afford it
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have noticed that can really skew reviews is any delay in updating an app after an iOS update. For example, EA managed to run a price promotion at the same time as the iOS 4 update, with the result that many of the games on offer didn't run properly under iOS 4 (I still have an unplayable version of Dragon Lair on my iPhone). From browsing the store at the time, this was creating plenty of negative reviews that would skew the overall review scores.
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