Kabam goes all-in on retention, Space Ape wastes millions of dollars on UA, and how does Pokemon GO monetise?

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• 5 DAUs up 300%, IAPs up 400%: What happened when MobilityWare fell in love with retention and segmentation

  

  What do you do when you've had a game out for years, it's starting to flag revenue-wise, and you want to breathe some new life into it?

  For MobilityWare, the answer was to add leaderboards and achievements to boost retention, as well as rethinking the UX - two moves to that did wonders for its game Blackjack Free.

  It managed to boost the game's daily active players by 300%, and its player's IAP spending by 400%.

  And it's not stopping there - it's segementing its users further to better suit its deals, and expanding the company as it begins to move into social casino.

  
  

• 4 For unicorn wannabes like Kabam, the mobile games market is now boom or bust

  

  One of the main metrics of success in mobile games lately is retention - after all, how does a company make money if players aren't sticking with the game?

  But for companies looking to make their millions, retention can't just be measured in days and weeks, and for Kabam it's all about years.

  "Traditional retention metrics simply do not provide utility for where our company and the broader industry is heading," said Kabam's CEO Kevin Chou.

  Its easy to see why this is the company's new direction - it certainly needs a long-term hit, and currently Marvel: Contest of Champions is the only thing it has in that regards.

  
  

• 3 Pokémon GO making $1.6 million per day on the US App Store

  

  Pokemon GO is steadily spreading to more and more countries, but not long ago it was only available in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

  And even then, it was still making impressive amounts of money, reportedly making $1.6 million a day on the US iOS App Store across its first weekend of release.

  It managed to top both the top downloaded and top grossing charts too, beating off stiff competition in the form of Mobile Strike and CSR Racing 2.

  Of course, now that the game has been pushed out to more markets, its sure to make even more money, though quite how much is yet to be seen.

  
  

• 2 How Space Ape wasted millions marketing its dark fantasy game Rival Kingdoms through the wrong UA channels

  

  The headline might be slightly inflammatory, but it's not far off the truth - Rival Kingdoms developer Space Ape did spend millions of dollars advertising its game.

  And, to be honest, it probably could've saved a bit of money by catering the game to a broader audience through some of its design decisions.

  The main issue was the game's dark fantasy design, a graphical choice that alienated a large proportion of the potential mobile audience.

  It meant that while players of the game had an average LTV of $12, the UA cost to draw in the audience was far higher, thanks to casual gamers being immediately turned off from the game.

  
  

• 1 How does Pokemon GO monetize compared to Miitomo?

  

  Pokemon GO may be the current big game right now, raking in millions of dollars a day without seemingly breaking a sweat, but how?

  Our IAP Inspector took a quick glance at the game to find out, and took the time to compare it to Nintendo's first mobile outing, Miitomo, while he was at it.

  "As its mobile projects increase in complexity - questions remain as to Pokemon GO's long-term appeal, but there is inarguably more to it than Miitomo - Nintendo is becoming less timid with its implementation," he writes.

  "It's an encouraging, and crucial, step for Nintendo's future as a mobile games company."