How EA Mobile and Gameloft are accelerating their price differential on App Store

If evidence was required that EA Mobile and Gameloft are tightening their hold on the App Store, the following graph should be ample.

From the end of July to mid-September 2009, I've graphed the average price of a game in the US games Paid For Top 100, versus those of games from EA Mobile and Ubisoft in the Top 100.



As can clearly be seen, EA Mobile has always maintained a strong margin over the general average: anywhere from 58 percent to 99 percent.

Gameloft has generally been less impressive, on occasions in August dropping to less than 10 percent.

More recently however, thanks to the release of games such as Gangstar: West Coast Hustle, Modern Combat: Sandstorm and Blades of Fury (all $6.99), its margin has increased significantly to 66 percent.

Indeed, as the average price of games in the Top 100 has dropped recently to around $2.50, EA Mobile's and Gameloft's averages have sharply increased, demonstrating how they are leveraging their advantages in terms of scale, access to licences, experienced development staff, and number of releases, to make the App Store a profitable place to do business.

Although it should also be born in mind that both companies spend more in terms of game development budgets than the average game in the Top 100.

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