James Batchelor writing for Develop-Online polled some industry experts on the future of mobile, and what’s interesting is the talk about Assassin’s Creed: Identity ($1.99) is an example of a game that soft launched as free-to-play and then went paid, and is apparently doing well enough for Ubisoft right now. InnoGames’ Dennis Rohlfing makes a good point about the market viability of paid games: “If you want to generate profit, that’s clearly possible. If you want annual revenues of $20m for a couple of years? No chance. The top paid games are not present in the top grossing charts."
And that’s a good reason from a business standpoint why so many more games are going free-to-play. Consider that paid games are a risk for developers of all sizes to make – they often have short prime shelf life and even launching the wrong week can be disastrous. A free-to-play game may be a bigger risk in comparison – the production costs of making a game-as-a-service and the testing, support, and monetization work that they require are often greater than making a pay-once game – but the reward can be orders of magnitude greater. And when you factor in that the attitude on mobile in particular has become that the mass market wants free-to-play, it makes sense for publishers and developers to go that way.
But it doesn’t make sense for everyone – paid games can still be profitable, in part because there is an audience there still. There are still stories of developers being profitable with their paid games – and especially smaller developers can afford to take creative risks. I’ve often thought that paid games on mobile, while practically a rounding error at this point, will someday have a viable niche for the people that enjoy them and developers that want to create those games. But it may involve a lot of shifting attitudes and more console/PC gamers accepting mobile platforms.
The rest of the article is worth reading, as there’s interesting insights on mid-core games (with someone providing a decent definition for once), and the possibilities of hardcore games and players hitting mobile, along with the potential of mobile VR. All of which I’m admittedly optimistic about, but it’s worth reading what some power players in the mobile gaming industry have to say about it.
