Mobile games: The Next Big Thing (by David Nixon).

The Next Big Thing

Saturday, May 19, 12

My Profile

• Making games professionally since 1989

• Worked in hardcore, casual, social, mobile

• Shipped hundreds of games

• Passion for Eastern European devs

• Co-Founder “Gemini Hive Inc.”


Thank You Nekki!

Video, images and logos (c) Nekki, 2012


Bullet Points• Games are no longer the most used apps!

• 1,000,000 New Smartphone installs daily, Android is CRUSHING

• “Gold rush” to mobile

• Free 2 Play might be winning the monetization race

• Platform agnosticism is becoming a religion

• Big companies spending Big $ to solve the “Discovery Problem”

• New ideas, use cases, tech keeps coming


Battle for “time spent”Another category of apps gives us a run for our money


Mobile Social Networking!


Tough Competition

• 5 Major players - 2,000,000,000 people

• FB/Instagram - $1,000,000,000 is alot of green

• FB IPO - $16,000,000,000 is a TON of green

• GREE, Mixi, DeNA, Tencent blanket Asia with nearly 600,000,000 users and all these co’s are tight with the carriers


The “Silver Lining”

• Total minutes are up (77 vs 68)

• SN’s are strong enablers for game features

• SN introduce and habituate device features

• Natural partnerships / overlap

• Money to burn


The Smartphone Revolution is upon us

Unless you’ve been asleep for 2 years, this shouldn’t be a surprise to you


• 100,000,000+ US smartphone gamers

• 10 BILLION by 2020

“Smart Device” Growth


It’s global• Growth in every

major market

• Half of predicted consumption growthi is in Asia

• Freemium helps confront piracy problems


IoS vs. Android

• 2x growth in 2012• Ipad still dominates

tablets market

• Pro - 5x growth in 2012• Con - Fragmentation• Is Galaxy Note a phone

or a tablet?


Rise of Android

850,000!!(device activations per day)


Android Fragmentation 1

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/05/16/android-fragmentation-graphic/


http://mashable.com/2012/05/16/android-fragmentation-graphic/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr


Android Fragmentation 2

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/05/16/android-fragmentation-graphic/




?Saturday, May 19, 12

Never count MS out.

They do s*** like this.

HTC Titan -- $0.01


Devs rush to mobileLike crazed lemmings...

(but maybe you’re this guy?)


Big social companies moving to Mobile

Zynga, wooga, 6waves, King.com, Crowdstar, Disney...


[Browser] Social Maturity

• Maturity = harder to succeed from standing start

• Fighting over scraps

• Park research suggests “exit or sell” in Social


We ‘Midcore’


If you are considering a switch to mobile, you are not alone, and you game better be...

Bottom line...


Free-2-Play...yay or nay?Some wise-ass subtitle


Free 2 Play Economics

• % of Mau paying - 3.5%-10% conversion

• ARPDAU = $.04 - $.05

• $8 - $15/mo ARPPU

• In game purchases are ~55% of total game revenue

• 90% of games spending is F2P today


Free 2 Play Lifecycle 1


Free 2 Play Lifecycle 2


F2P Realities

• F2P is expensive, time consuming, and hard

• It requires constant and ongoing attention

• There is a steep learning curve

• Experience with service-based F2P games (such as online-social) is a major advantage

• When it works, it works really, really well


Platform SchmatformWho cares, just let me play!


• 50%+ consumers play mobile games to extend/continue their gameplay experience from other platforms (newzoo)

• Players & Designers thinking less about platform and more about unified UEX

• Middleware providing roads to both technical and marketing access to many platforms

Platform Agnosticism


Dude, where’s my app?Distribution & Discover


Appstore Evolution

• Google Android Marketplace and renames it “Google Play”

• Facebook Launches Appstore

• Zynga appstore?


Customer Acquisition(It’s complicated)


Download Motivations

• Americans go by price

• Russians rely on friends and download new releases

• Know what motivates your audience when picking your strategy & partners Newzoo Trend Report | Mobile Games | March 2012

Reasons to download mobile games. Russians rely on friends, Americans go for price (2011).

games market research

© 2012 Newzoo | www.newzoo.com | 12

Source: 2011 Newzoo Consumer Research | Newzoo Data Explorer

Gamesindustry.com/blog Aggregated market data

& investment news Smartly tagged

Gamesindustry.com B2B market place >400 companies Free to list your company

Newzoo Free Services in 2012


The Bleeding EdgeNew Tech Game-Changers


mmm....Ice Cream Sandwich

• Android 4.0 is finally rolling out

• Impacts phones more than tablets

• It’s a much better user experience

• Fixes some annoying technical issues

• Double-edged fragmentation grenade


• Feature limited

• Browser performance concerns

• Not useful on Android < 4.0

• But - wow - when it works...it’s really cool

• Possible game-changer for certain types of games


Connected Screens


Thank YouDavid Nixon, [email protected]

Don’t forget to play Vector for Online & Mobile!


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Payor Demographic NotesMobile game payors could be women or men (slightly more likely to be men) and 10 - 35 y/o

Asian players are 2x more likely to pay!


Design Challenges Today’s mobile devices are feature-rich


Anatomy of a Smartphone


Design

• Multitouch

• Spotty internet connection

• Location services

• To tilt or not to tilt

• Cameras


Mobile games: The Next Big Thing (by David Nixon).

Technology

Transcript of Mobile games: The Next Big Thing (by David Nixon).