Report: 83% of mobile games fail in the three years after launch

Gamernyc78

Gamernyc78

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Report: 83% of mobile games fail in the three years after launch

New research from mobile revenue growth engine SuperScale has found that 83% of launched mobile games fail within three…
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New research from mobile revenue growth engine SuperScale has found that 83% of launched mobile games fail within three years, while 43% are cancelled during development.

Advertisement Conducted by Atomik Research, SuperScale's Good Games Don't Die report was published this week, and is based on interviews with 500 game developers in the UK and US. According to the report, 76% of launched games reached peak revenue within the first year, but only 4% reached this peak during the second year.

The report also found that while over half of developers use live ops in their games, 38% don't release regular content or updates, with less than half releasing monthly updates to their games, leading to just 5% of games receiving support seven years post-launch.

Despite the failure rate of new titles, 78% of developers prefer working on them.

However, over a third of respondents said that uncertainty in the industry "is stopping them from developing new games," with 30% feeling as though the current market "is too difficult to succeed in.
 
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Alabtrosmyster

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nongkris said:
You can swap mobile games for gaas and see the same result. Glad Sony decided to scale down their GAAS projects after Jim Ryan was overthrown.
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The idea is to make a fortnite or two.

Most games/movies/songs don't come near enough money to break even, same for businesses in general. They fail rapidly.
 
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Gamernyc78

Gamernyc78

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historia said:
Praying for all gacha games to fail.

The world would be a much better place without games like Genshin.
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But damn some of them make so much money. It's gd if Sony has one or two really successful ones so they can use that profit for other projects. Diversifying portfolio is good.
 
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Gamernyc78 said:
But damn some of them make so much money. It's gd if Sony has one or two really successful ones so they can use that profit for other projects. Diversifying portfolio is good.
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That is a feel good assumption about caretakers not driven by profit.

Reality is, that profit will be marginally invested in the cash cow, with the biggest share of the profit sucked out, and with other studios being asked simply: why can't you be like our cash cow over here? Thus, eventually, sooner or later a top down executive push asks for a change in approach from studios doing AAAA single-player (what these studios are comfortable with), to become like the cash-cow with GAAS.

It works fine, as in now when the cash cows for Sony are all AAA single-player story driven, partly cinematic games (survival horror, action-adventure, super-hero etc). That is to say, as long as you're in that high-quality single-player club, you're in sync with the company's vision and approach to making money, and increasing profit every year. As soon as the cash-cow becomes a GAAS, and it becomes a darling inside the company, whether organic or through acquisition, say Bungie's Destiny....the prerogative changes.....coming from the suits in top-down fashion (CEO and down) demanding to replicate that GAAS success with all the other studios in ownership, and thus these suits force change (cause the prerogative is not simply to stay happy with the status quo and money coming in, the prerogative, mandate and demand is to make more money this year than you made last year at the same cost or lower cost of production). That's how you get an EA, an ABK, and unfortunately a Warner with the Rocksteady (Suicide Squad), WB Montreal (Gotham Knights) situation.

They got many terms for that.... "adapting to changing business environments". I myself prefer the "fad of the moment".
 
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Kokoloko

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Whats failure? Not making there money back? I mean 3 years is fine.

How many people are still playing the same game after 3 years, whether its a GOTY winner or Multiplayer.
Online games like Final Fantasy Online or Destiny seem to have the longest legs
 
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