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Apple’s Gaming Revenue Reportedly Exceeds Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo Combined
- ethbr0 5y agoActual WSJ story: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-doesnt-make-videogames-but-its-the-hottest-player-in-gaming-11633147211 https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-doesnt-make-videogames-bu...
- pell 5y agoYet the vast majority of those games seem to have very questionable business models. This is great for shareholders but from a point of taste this is nothing to be proud of. Apple though used to be or at least tried to be the company of taste.
- heavenlyblue 5y agoIt's actually a bit amusing that Apple considers porn to be less ethical than the business models of some of these games.
- formerly_proven 5y agoLooking at tits: Nuh-uh! Our ethics board won't allow it! :3 Gambling away income so poor stays poor: Fuck yeah! snorts 30 % cut in coke
- falcolas 5y agoFWIW, they're good about keeping that extensively exploitative crap out of their own less-exploitative arcade subscription.
- AlexandrB 5y agoOne hilarious consequence is games like Angry Birds Reloaded. This game has a variety of "boosters" that can be bought with a currency that I'm guessing could be bought for real money before. It can also be earned very slowly by playing the game. Now this game is on Apple Arcade with the boosters and premium currency intact, but no micro-transactions. As a result it just feels like a game with a borderline-useless booster system tacked on because the time needed to earn these boosters makes them impractical to use on a regular basis. It's a pretty good illustration of how MTX crappifies game design.
- boplicity 5y agoI wonder how much of the money basically comes from something virtually identical to "gambling addiction."
- thebean11 5y agoI briefly worked at a slot machine app company (microtransactions, but you cannot win real money) and my guess would be a lot. I did not feel good about that job.
- spicybright 5y agoI'm also really curious about the behind the scenes of companies like this Would you mind sharing some of your experiences? What were some moments in particular that made you feel not good about what you were doing?
- thebean11 5y agoI used to sit by the customer support agent, and she mentioned that one of our players frequently opens tickets asking for more "slot chips", promising to make a purchase as soon as their next paycheck comes in. It seemed even sadder to me than pouring your paycheck into a real slot machine, there wasn't even the potential of a reward beyond worthless chips and endless levels. I was only there about 4 months. From talking to the folks at the company, I got the impression the target demo was lonely, often alcoholic people in their forties and fifties. Although I find it pretty hard personally to see what the appeal of our product was, I do think the business model was based on getting these people addicted. If you want to see what the product was like, just search slots on iOS or Android app stores, the company in question doesn't exist anymore but it's all the same stuff. Google and Apple must be making a killing off of it.
- radicalbyte 5y agoThe vast majority of it I would wager. It's shocking that the EU hasn't regulated against it yet.
- derefr 5y ago
- k1rcher 5y agoGone are the days of Jelly Car. Now it’s enormously rare to find any sort of mobile game that does _not_ have either invasive ads with arbitrary timers and intentionally hard to click dismiss buttons or egregious in-app-purchase models
- Gigachad 5y agoThe developer of Jelly Car just announced he is working on Jelly Car 4 btw.
- heartbreak 5y agoThe entire Apple Arcade collection are games without invasive ads, arbitrary timers, or IAP models. You pay the arcade subscription ($5/mo or Apple One) and the games are all free downloads.
- k1rcher 5y agoThis is very interesting and good to know. I rarely game on my phone these days, but every now and then I get that itch. I’ll check out their catalogue.
- joshstrange 5y agoThey have also been adding games that aren't exclusives to them and initially launched on the main App Store. They are all the games that have a "+" after their name. Essentially the same game will all IAP removed/made free.
- mcphage 5y agoI love those so much—so many great older games out there have since become unplayable because of constant intrusive ads. Like, shortly before Cut The Rope+ came out, I tried replaying the original Cut The Rope, and got an unskippable ad after every reset (or every other?). Apple Arcade gave me a way to play it again, without spending more time watching ads than actually playing.
- _fat_santa 5y agoNot just games, both apps and games in the appstore today seem to follow the "gym" model, where they count on your signing up and forgetting about it. A perfect example of this is an app called "DayCount". The app's concept is very simple, enter a date, and the app will tell you either how many days until this date, or how many days have passed since this date. When you open the app for the first time you're immediately presented with a "Pro" version, for $3.99/month. And almost every app does it now, many are "free" but as soon as you open it you realize that you actually have to "subscribe" to the app. Now don't get me wrong, some apps work great with this model. I just happily paid 1Password for another year of service, but 1Password is a genuinely useful application, and they keep my passwords, and paying them $2/mo to take care of this is a great deal in my opinion. But what kind of value does a "day counting" app add that would warrant an annualized price of $48? I will say that DayCount is better than others, because it actually does something. I once saw an "Emoji Keyboard", a re-implementation of the default emoji keyboard, offered for $9.99/month. Apple needs some more rules around what is and isn't allowed with iAP purchases. Subscriptions should have extra scrutiny put on them, make sure they actually add value and don't just extract money from users. Hell it might be a good idea to nuke "Subscriptions" entirely. I get Netflix, Hulu and other services that give you ongoing value. But the notes app you threw together in half an hour using tutorials on Youtube does not deserve to charge $4.99/month for it's "Pro" version.
- jhatax 5y agoYou’re suggesting that the App Store impose more rules on developers in this day and age when the App Store is deemed onerous, restrictive, rent-seeking, etc. The other side of this argument is that developers will always find ways to make money — they need to pay bills. As long as they are following the rules of the platform — use IAP, don’t abuse user data, etc. — the App Store should allow the app on the store regardless of the future subscription cost. Whether it is affordable or not is an individual subscriber’s decision, not that of the App Store. So, should Target not carry items at a price point higher than a threshold that it sets arbitrarily? If users don’t want to pay a subscription for a service that they don’t think is going to add value — not for you or me to determine the value an app has for its legion of users just because it is not of value to us — they shouldn’t download the app or pay for it. Maybe users can use the day counting app to count down days until when their free subscription ends, then unsubscribe. Apple has made it super simple to unsubscribe to a subscription purchased through the App Store. If users don’t use said feature, that’s on them; it’s not the responsibility of the App Store. Let’s take responsibility for our actions & subscriptions.
- boardwaalk 5y agoI came here to comment with that exact though. Apple does seem to care that the things it supports are "good" in the general sense. It feels like this mobile gaming thing grew up under them and it makes them so much money they just sort of turn a blind eye. So many of their devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, now MacBook) seem like such obvious decent gaming machines, far overshadowing something like a Nintendo Switch in specs, that it's really sad we can't get much worth playing on them (personal opinion).
- tinus_hn 5y agoApple blocks this: they are the gatekeepers of the walled garden! Apple allows this: they are a company of bad taste!
- pell 5y agoApple's decisions foster a culture. Of all the many arbitrary rules they set up on their app store, I do wonder how many actually kept abuse at bay and why they turn a blind eye on the very obvious one. If there's a walled garden to begin with, it's fine to criticize the way it is being run.
- falcolas 5y agoGood old mobile gaming. It's huge, just hidden as part of "how I use my phone". Phones are certainly powerful enough to game, but they lag behind even the Switch because of poor heat dissipation.
- seabrookmx 5y agoFor gamers used to console or PC (like myself) the main limiting factor with mobile gaming is the input method (touchscreen) not performance. Yes the Switch has an active cooler but it's on quite old silicon and is only pushing a 720p screen.
- kemiller 5y agoThese are outside numbers designed to make Apple look bad in a lawsuit. I’d take them with a grain of salt.
- croon 5y agoI don't know what other evidence one would need for antitrust. They have to my knowledge never produced a game, or a "real" console, yet they rake in more gaming money than any other? That's a hostage situation by any measure. Am I looking at this wrong?
- falcolas 5y ago> Am I looking at this wrong? IMO, yes. Their cut is the same as the big gaming companies (30%), they're just in more hands - they have a bigger market than the consoles. EDIT: TFA is comparing Apple to Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo here, all of which have walled garden stores on their consoles, which all charge ~30%. This is rather important context.
- croon 5y agoIf you're referring to Steam et al, I don't have to use Steam on my device.
- muststopmyths 5y agoI believe Apple's userbase may also exceed Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo combined. The interesting thing about this is whether or not Google is in the same ballpark. I have not worked on mobile games, so maybe someone in the know can educate us. Is the Play Store comparable in revenue for a given game ? Anecdotally, I have heard not. But with in-app purchases being more common now I would have expected that to equalize.
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- jimbob45 5y agoIt’s exclusively from their App Store so I don’t understand why this wouldn’t be considered App Store revenue in the category of gaming. Also this is rent-seeking bullshit considering they get to take a 30% cut for adding nothing to the platform other than owning it.
- evilduck 5y ago> take a 30% cut for adding nothing to the platform other than owning it. Since you're the one making the claim: Please put together some numbers of what it costs to work with an international payment processor, managing refunds, customer support options of any sort, managing multi-state and international sales tax revenue and accounting, an update and distribution platform, a CDN equivalent, an easy beta release mechanism, decent security and signing options, your own marketing website, software developer time or salary to build and integrate all of these things, etc. It's possibly more than 30%. Plus if every indie game ISV had to do that stuff that they may not really enjoy just to launch a game, they may not bother writing the game in the first place. This is all value added to the platform. Which is why everyone has been cool with paying basically the same cut for literally every other platform as well.
- jimbob45 5y agoI don't disagree that those are difficult to implement. My claim is that Apple has wiped away any competition for any of those things by locking everyone else out of their platform and now claim that they're doing you a favor by not allowing anyone else to compete with them. Maybe no one else could do it at the margin Apple is doing it, maybe they could. We'll never know because of Apple's anti-competitive practices. They're just unwilling to participate in Capitalism as far as their platform is concerned by pre-emptively blocking off any competition. They want a dictatorship and they want you to pretend it's out of their benevolence.
- Someone 5y ago> as far as their platform is concerned I thought that capitalism meant that, if it’s their platform they set the rules, and should be allowed to decide what gets sold there and under what conditions. If you want to sell anything in a physical shop or in Disney World, you have to deal with the conditions of the shop owner, too. It wouldn’t even surprise me if Disney took a cut on each ice cream sold in their theme parks (sellers might even prefer that over a fixed price contract as it moves part of the bad weather risk out of their hands) The only reason to deviate from that here may be the sheer size of Apple’s platform. That may make them so powerful that their free reign over their store must be restricted (a similar thing has happened in some countries with big supermarket chains versus producers of goods. If Walmart were to decide to stop selling brand X as a negotiation tactic to get better conditions, a court could forbid that)
- Factorium 5y agoApple probably makes more profit from Gaming than from every game developer on the planet combined, despite not making any games. If anyone is thinking of working in the Games Industry: don't. All of the profit will be skimmed off by platform owners. Its why wages and conditions are so poor at development studios. This is probably unlikely to change given that Apple is the #1 most owned stock by the US Congress: https://investinganswers.com/articles/10-most-popular-stocks-owned-congress https://investinganswers.com/articles/10-most-popular-stocks...
- JiNCMG 5y agoThis is BS. The publishers make the larger take. If a Game Developer can release a game on it's own without a Publisher (with iOS allows) then the developer will make most of the money. Ask Epic how much they made when Unreal was sold at stores. Less than 40%!
- Agentlien 5y agoThere are more studios than ever with great work conditions and reasonable pay. Of course, it depends a lot on where you live. But, living in Sweden, I've had decent working conditions and wage across two companies and several games.
- glouwbug 5y agoAnd airpods bring in more revenue than Uber, nVidia, AMD, Spotify, Twitter, Shopify, and Snapchat
- harles 5y agoThis makes me sad. I played a ton of video games as a kid and can look back on those experiences and stories as fond memories. I wonder if folks mostly gaming on mobile will be able to do the same. For anyone that does mostly mobile gaming: I’m curious if you feel it’s enriched your life or has just been there to pass time?
- falcolas 5y agoBoth could happen. I'm sure many people have fond memories around Angry Birds. And Cut the Rope has an adorably memorable avatar.
- nullspace 5y agoHaha, I don't mean offense, but your comment sounds like "back in the day we did things better". There's a huge variety of really games available on iOS that cater to all but most hardcore gamers. Even the games that seem trivial on the surface (Candy Crush) can provide hours of deep entertainment, and best of all you don't need to commit 30 minutes to 1 hour to it in a single sitting. Personally, I think the best games on iOS are better than the best games of the 90s. Reasonable people may disagree, however, it's definitely not far. > For anyone that does mostly mobile gaming: I’m curious if you feel it’s enriched your life or has just been there to pass time? Yes.
- AlexandrB 5y ago> Personally, I think the best games on iOS are better than the best games of the 90s. Reasonable people may disagree, however, it's definitely not far. I think the best iOS games are on average much more polished, but less deep/engaging than what we had in the 90s. Some of this is due to the nature of the platform - iOS games are often designed to be played in short sessions instead of sucking you in for hours like a SNES era JRPG. The elephant in the room though is micro-transactions. Early console games were a complete experience that you bought (or convinced your parents to buy) once. A lot of top grossing iOS games are constantly trying to get more money out of their audience. This skews the design of these games in all kinds of ways like unnecessary timers, pay2win multiplayer, unfair difficulty curves that require "boosts", or repetitive, daily chores to keep people coming back. I think it's these elements that make me long for 90s era video games.
- howinteresting 5y agoFrom the Epic v. Apple judgment: "Further, the evidence demonstrates that most App Store revenue is generated by mobile gaming apps, not all apps. Thus, defining the market to focus on gaming apps is appropriate. Generally speaking, on a revenue basis, gaming apps account for approximately 70% of all App Store revenues. This 70% of revenue is generated by less than 10% of all App Store consumers. These gaming-app consumers are primarily making in-app purchases which is the focus of Epic Games’ claims. By contrast, over 80% of all consumer accounts generate virtually no revenue, as 80% of all apps on the App Store are free." (pg 1) "With cross-platform games like Fortnite available on multiple devices, these platforms are truly competing against one another for these in-app transactions. For instance, an internal Epic Games email from September 2018 notes that “purchase behavior may have changed with the addition of mobile, especially Apple and more recently Android, where users are just logging onto their mobile app to purchase.” In other words, “most players are still playing on PC/Epic platform[s] as they did before, but purchasing on other platforms like mobile because it may be easier and more convenient [i.e.] when the store updates.”422 This is despite the fact that iOS Fortnite players consisted of only approximately 10% of daily active users, and Fortnite players generally prefer playing on alternative platforms." (pg 84) From these paragraphs, a clear picture arises: * Most App Store revenue comes from a small number of high-spending whales purchasing in-game items. * The reason Apple gets to claim its cut for games like Fortnite is not because people play these games on Apple devices, but because phones are the most convenient way to buy in-game items. * These high-spending whales disproportionately own Apple devices over competitors like Android, to no one's surprise. Given these facts, it is no surprise that Apple makes more money than those other companies. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo tend to make more money from full-priced games rather than free-to-play games with IAPs. Personally, having tried games from both models, I find one to be clearly more ethical than the other, and it is definitely not the one that forms the backbone of Apple's app store revenue. (I have issues with how locked down game consoles are, but Apple's total control over its personal computing devices is a million times more serious.)
- howinteresting 5y agoAddendum: Personally, I'm really excited about the Steam Deck. An open mobile gaming platform that runs Arch (!) and consists of primarily full-priced experiences seems like just the right fit for me.
- soneca 5y agoSo when gamers brag that the games industry is larger than the movies industry they are mostly bragging about those cassino-like exploitive mobile games, not just their dear AAA games?
- howinteresting 5y agoCorrect. I enjoy video games (my favorites this year are Psychonauts 2 and Metroid Dread), and it's disheartening to see exploitative psychology-hacking games become so dominant.
- JiNCMG 5y agoLoot Boxes and it's kin are the same and do exists in AAA titles.
- LanceH 5y agoGrand Theft Auto made about a billion last year alone. Madden Football (which comes out every year): $1.62 billion. There are a lot of games "bigger" than movies in not just revenue but total players/viewers. Engagement isn't even close as players stick to games far longer than the average 100 minute movie.
- Jensson 5y agoThe gaming industry became larger than the movie industry long before smartphones or micro transactions and just continued growing since. Today the movie industry is tiny compared to the games industry.
- quyleanh 5y agoLet see what happens when Apple fails on appeal in Epic's case. The gaming mobile market is still too big and valuable. With 30% commmisson, Apple doesn't need to care about Mac gaming, at least for now.
- worrycue 5y agoI don’t think they will fail on the 30% commission part. If they lose on that, console gaming as we know it will end because commission/licensing fees is how console manufacturers make money too - the hardware is sold at near break even cost; with licensing fees being how they make back their R&D and misc cost.
- parhamn 5y ago> WSJ reported that “6% of App Store game customers in 2017 accounted for 88% of all the store’s game billings for the year, according to court records.” So thats why iOS games are upsell garbage. Theyre building for the 6%.
- aaomidi 5y agoDaily reminder that micro transactions are an accessibility issue and should not be allowed under ADA or basic morality. Preying on neurodivergent people is fucked and Apple knows exactly what they're doing.