Deep analytic Profit mode: Why is Angry Birds falling?

Summary: The app monetization model on the App Store has quietly evolved and entered the "Next level." Free gaming and in-app payments have become the mainstream of profit models. Some re-billing games are quietly emerging. The old TOP1 "Angry Birds" slowly began to fall from the income list. Why is that?

PopCap Large-scale "zombie flee": the recent popcap (Bao Kai) layoffs, involving 12% of the total number of employees in North America. PopCap has laid off 50 people in Seattle and Vancouver Studios. The company has about 380 employees in both places, and 40 employees in San Francisco. PopCap is also considering the fate of his office in Dublin, Ireland, where the company employs about 90 people. John Vechey, co-founder of PopCap, said the layoffs would be worse if the EA was behind the backs, because the EA's stall was large enough for some of the redundancies to be diverted to other EA studios rather than losing their jobs altogether.

Angry Birds core members fly away from the "Bird's Nest": Rovio's recent core members have resigned. Digital strategist Julien Fourgeaud, whose title on his business card is the "New Product Guide", has worked for the Finnish-based Espoo company for two years before leaving office.

At the beginning of this year, two senior managers who played an important role in the development of Angry Birds left Rovio and founded a game studio called Boomlagoon, in which Antti Sten was the primary server architect of the Angry Birds first version and Tuomas Erikoinen is the chief art.

Plants vs. Zombies and Angry Birds are some of the top level apps in the mobile app industry. But recently, we are all in the heat of "a number of well-known companies layoffs, mobile internet winter to attack." is the mobile internet itself a bubble problem? Or is there a problem with the monetization model for mobile apps? Can well-known applications support the overhead of a large development team? How does a well-known application keep evergreen? What's wrong with the profit model of birds and zombies?

"Next level" in the APP store monetization model

So far, mobile app developers, who have been panning for gold on the Apple App Store, have gone through two big stages of development. The first stage is the era in which well-known applications rise in the App store. At this stage, there are some notable features. For example, users love to pursue some one or two well-known applications. Its game application is beautifully crafted, usually a single-player class-based casual game. Can take full advantage of the player's fragmentation time. At the same time, the game does not need to spend a great effort to promote, just by virtue of excellent product design, can attract countless users. Full version of the game will be a one-time payment mechanism, usually not too high price, $0.99 is the App Store "average".

But remember, the above-mentioned trait is just the first stage of the app Store 12 months ago. About 6 months ago, the app monetization model on the App Store has been quietly changing to "Next level." You may also be aware that the taste of the Apple App Store has changed.

Impacted by the Android platform and Google Play, the second phase of the App Store has become a mainstream monetization model with free games and in-app payments. At the same time, some re-billing games are quietly emerging. At this time, with Angry Birds, from the App Store's income list slowly began to fall.

Figure: "Next level" in profit mode

Angry Birds of the Fall

Let's take a look at the list of Angry Birds today in the U.S. App Store.

Figure: App Store iphone US revenue list, ranking #60

Figure: APP Store ipad US revenue list, ranking #94

Figure: APP store ipad US pay list, ranking #20

Now the "Angry Birds" game on the ipad has slowly begun to be replaced by the new Angry Birds Space edition. In fact, just a few weeks ago, it was TOP2 on the pay list. Although it is ranked TOP20 in the US District pay list today, it still shows that many players are willing to pay $0.99 for the purchase.

What is worth thinking about is why the game that sells so well on the pay list has dropped nearly hundred in the total income list. We cannot help but ask, who earns most of the profit from the App Store?

Figure: APP Store Revenue rankings

As you may have guessed, these are free + inside-paid mobile games. Through the above, you can see that the game occupies the majority of the seats in the income list. Of TOP25 's high-income applications, 22 were mobile games, which accounted for 88%. It should also be noted that there are 18 free games, which occupy 72% of the list. Mobile gaming is still the best money-making category, with a huge amount of potential spending on the user base. At the same time, we see that the users who play the game are immersed in the game, the application itself will sprout a stronger feelings, they are more likely to like the role of the game, expect the role of success, so they are more likely to spend money.

Free games, really not free

Deep into these "free" games, whether it's shooting classes, rounds, strategy, solitaire, tower Defense or MMO games, they all have two common features. First, there is an in-app pay purchase mechanism. Second, in the game, the system constantly encourages players to buy paid props or virtual currency.

These traits are only the basis of a high-income game. To really become a top-level revenue big on the App Store, you have to create a very sophisticated and sophisticated charging mechanism. In all of your users, the real money to buy props players, in fact, is only 5%, and 95% of the users are not willing to pay. This is why you should use the "free Game" under the guise of attracting more people to download the game. Use the funnel effect to filter out the 5% paid users. In addition, there will be about 1% of the loyal users, they do not even look at the price, will be directly photographed the necessary props and equipment. They will spend at least $50 in the game.

In addition to the game's various interfaces, the design of "pay for top props" button, but also to try to do some "good" reminders to users, such as the simple pop-up window: "You do not have enough gold, you would like to buy some?" "For free players who refuse to pay, such a sincere word can also impress them with a fee. Do not look at this little hint, perhaps it will allow the proportion of paid users can increase to 10%.

For mobile advertising alliances, those are pennies. The pop-up of small windows and irrelevant ads will only make the user's experience worse. Make them feel like they're manipulating an Android phone. The real iOS app should be elegant, pure and targeted to the user's pocket. If you're spending your mind on the SDK for your ad alliance, it's better to spend more time trying to make a few payments.

Figure: Increasing the number of in-app payments

How much money can you make in mobile games now?

How much can I earn on top app in the App Store revenue list? The news is that it is about $2 million to $3 million per month. The magnitude of the order is now expanding. This is only the most conservative estimate. If you feel that the number of $3 million is Taixu, take a look at the following article. CSR Racing is a free racing game that sells on the App store. The CEO, who was interviewed by foreign media Pocketgamer, said last month that CSR Racing brought them $12 million in revenue. This is almost equivalent to a game that brings in $400,000 a day of income. because of their excellent performance on iOS, they are not planning to port the game to Android.

Now, let's look at a better application, Dragon Vale (Dragon Valley). For the past three months, the app has not fallen below the top 5 on both the iphone and ipad platforms. And Dragon Vale's ranking on the income list is much higher than the CSR racing, so we'll make a conservative estimate if it earns an average of $500,000 a day (25% more per day than CSR Racing). This bodes well for the mere game, which earns at least $180 million a year. Whether it's Dragon Vale or CSR Racing, they are beautifully designed, user-experienced, and well-planned games on the inside pay mechanism. They have also become the main source of profit for the Apple App Store itself.

Photo:Dragon Vale (Dragon Valley)

Figure:Dragon Vale USA, iphone platform ranking statistics

Imagine: The third phase of the APP store monetization model

Social apps are the best gold-sucking weapon of all times: Instagram's $1 billion on Facebook, with simple photo sharing. (though it may not be worth the money right now:) The social itself contains an infinite amount of energy. This is because, with the advent of the mobile Internet and globalization, we see a very clear trend: The human race is gradually forming a "global consciousness". The map below shows that global awareness is affecting everyone on our planet. All humans begin to experience some important historical moments, such as 911, the U.S. election, the Olympics, and so on. As a developer of mobile apps, make your app a link between people, and maybe you can hold on to the third stage.

Figure: Social, global awareness, perhaps the third stage of a profit model

Bird falls on the top of a pig

Given the great success of Rovio's not-so-familiar angry birds, they used unity to design the world of green-skinned pigs, which was the first time Rovio used the technology. In-game green-skinned pigs only have to build vehicles and wonderful devices to eat different eggs, so badpiggies is no longer a slingshot operation game. With the popularity of Angry Birds, the game has a unique advantage in gaining access to its users. Rovio co-founder Niklashed said: "I spent a week playing this game and I like it very much." You need to focus on the details and iterations of the game's operations to make it more fun. ”

Badpiggies is the third game Rovio released this year, preceded by the Angry Birds Space Board and the magical 阿 dint released in June. "Angry Birds" super 1 billion download volume so that many later games, but Rovio launched this year's second game "magical 阿 dint" performance is not satisfactory, I hope that piglet can grasp the current App store in the second stage of the big situation.

Deep analytic Profit mode: Why is Angry Birds falling? Go