Many gaming development teams lean towards the mobile side due to the potential of a market formed by billions of people. The reality is that many of these games crash too soon.
A survey conducted among hundreds of developers offers a less hopeful view of the mobile gaming business.
The “games as a service” model doesn’t seem to work very well on smartphones and tablets, and failure is the likely outcome for most development efforts.
A sample of 500 studies paints a bleak future
The market research firm Atomik Research interviewed 500 developers from the United States and the United Kingdom, revealing a less than stellar trend in the mobile gaming sector.
The “Good Games Don’t Die” report states that 83% of games released on mobile platforms fail within three years, and 43% don’t even survive the development phase and are canceled before release.
The report highlights that 76% of mobile games reached their revenue peak in the first year, but only a meager 4% can achieve the same result during the second year.
The fickle casual users who play on mobile devices are not the only reason for this trend, as only a minority of developers seem willing to adopt a proper “live service” game approach.
According to Atomik Research, over half of mobile developers offer live services in their games, but 38% do not release content or updates regularly.
More than half of developers publish monthly updates for their games, and only 5% of games receive extended support seven years after release.
The failure rate for new game startups is astounding, yet 78% of developers still prefer working on new projects.
More than a third of surveyed developers state that the “uncertainty in the sector” prevents them from creating new mobile gaming experiences, while 30% believe that the current market is too tough to offer a reasonable chance of success.
The report “Good Games Don’t Die” should serve as a wake-up call to the industry, added Trancik, providing actionable data as a source of inspiration for both developers and publishers to maximize their revenue from both “new and old” games.
