How to make a living on the App Store, Gameloft soft-launches Gangstar New Orleans, and Free-To-Start is DOA
Former Editor Jon Jordan may have stepped back from his role towards the end of 2016, but he's still kicking about, and his returning opinion pieces have definitely caught our readers' eyes during the last week.
The most read article of the week was his opinion that Nintendo's free-to-start payment model is already dead on arrival, which he proves by comparing Super Mario Run's retention data to that of Pokemon GO.
Second, Gameloft has soft-launched Gangstar New Orleans, and taken the surprising move of making it free-to-play instead of its usual premium approach, something we are sure to be looking at closer when it launches worldwide.
Towers, hits, and crowds
Third up is our own Matt Suckley asking himself where all the tower defence games have gone, as more and more developers take their games and push them into different genres.
And finally, Folmer Kelly explains how you can make a successful living on the App Store without making a hit game, and Jon Jordan looks at whether Crowdstar is already proving to be a good acquisition for Glu Mobile.
Click the link below to find out more about the stories that caught our reader's attention of the last week.
#5: Is Glu Mobile’s $45 million Crowdstar acquisition already paying off?
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Is Glu Mobile’s $45 million Crowdstar acquisition already paying off? »In 2016, Glu Mobile made the slightly surprising decision to purchase Crowdstar, a little-known developer, for the not-insignificant sum of $45.5 million.
It may be a lot of money for a developer no one really knows, but as Jon Jordan points out, the developer may already have started paying for itself with its latest game.
The studio recently released Design Home, a dress-up game with human beings swapped out for interior design, and it seems to be doing quite well.
"Already a top 100 top grossing game on the Apple App Store and Google Play in the US, Canada and Australia, if Design Home can sustain its performance, the Crowdstar acquisition will have been vindicated," writes Jordan.
#4: How to make a good living from mobile game development without having a mega hit
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How to make a good living from mobile game development without having a mega hit »At Pocket Gamer Connects Helsinki 2016, Folmer Kelly, CEO of Sets and Settings, gave a talk on how to make it as an indie without the need for mega-successes.
"You probably don't know my games, and I make a pretty good living," began Kelly, saying that you don't need to spend millions on marketing to compete on the App Store and make money.
"People tend not to believe there is no middle ground", he continued, saying that some people don't understand that not every game is either a major hit or an abject failure.
The reason behind this is because "people want to hear about the huge successes" - not the games that only do okay.
#3: Where have all the tower defence games gone?
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Where have all the tower defence games gone? »"Who remembers tower defence?"
So begins Matt Suckley's dive into the history of the tower defence genre, as he ponders why it has largely disappeared from the App Store.
As he points out, tower defence titan Plants Vs Zombies has even moved away from the genre, with its latest title taking the form of a MOBA/CCG mix, as just about everything is these days.
"Another recent example of this is Subatomic Studios' December 2016 release Fieldrunners Attack!, the latest entry in a series that's lain dormant since 2012's Fieldrunners 2," he adds.
His conclusion? "As for why some developers are moving away from tower defence, it's a simple one - they believe they can make more money elsewhere."
"That doesn't mean the genre is dead, however."
#2: Gameloft soft launches open-world title Gangstar New Orleans in the Philippines
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Gameloft soft launches open-world title Gangstar New Orleans in the Philippines »Gameloft had a bit of an odd 2016, what with being acquired by Vivendi and everything, so it's interesting to see what the studio is getting up to lately.
The next major thing it appears to be doing is working on Gangstar New Orleans, a game it has just soft-launched in the Philippines.
The Grand Theft Auto-like title is the first free-to-play version made in the series so far, marking an interesting direction that could go either way for the game.
How an open-world title will effectively make use of free-to-play is something we've not seen before, and we'll be keeping a keen eye on this to see how it might work.
#1: Forget revenue, it’s Super Mario Run’s retention that proves Free-to-Start is DOA
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Forget revenue, it’s Super Mario Run’s retention that proves Free-to-Start is DOA »Super Mario Run drummed up a lot of discussion when it launched thanks to both the excitement of having Mario on mobile and the fact it cost $9.99 to unlock the full game.
But Jon Jordan argues that the number of sales and arguments over price are almost entirely irrelevant - it's the retention data that tells a more interesting story.
When compared to Pokemon GO, Super Mario Run players are switching off much faster once they reach a point at which they complete the game, and stop being interested in the multiplayer portions.
If the company doesn't change its opinion on F2P design, Jordan warns that "Nintendo’s mobile experiment, which promised so much, will have been Quick-to-End".