From two of my recent Quora posts:
Question: How much money does the average mobile game make?
There are tons of games on the App Store and Google Play. Everyone seems to know about the hit games. How much revenue does the run-of-the-mill game generate? Is the revenue curve steady and flat? Do some genres do much better than others?
My answer:
Question should be rephrased:
How much money does the MEDIAN revenue rank game make.. ie game with revenue rank 100,000 out of about 200,000+ on iOS Apple US?
Answer: near zero.
Relation between mobile game revenue and revenue rank is a severe power function, more severe than the bookstore relation estimated 10 years ago and used to justify “long tail” inclusiveness in online stores.
I have estimated that top 10 revenue rank games derive 50% of revenue whereas the “long tail” of mobile game revenue ranks — games ranked 10,001 – 200,000+ derive only 5% of revenue. Long tail here is far smaller than books where revenue rank books 10,001 – 200,000 derive 30% of revenue.
To go back to the first question, I have a more precise answer. I have estimated that the trailing 12 month global mobile game revenue, less 30% cut from Apple and Google is $11.2B. Mobile game long tail — games ranked 10,001 to say 200,000 get 5% or $560M. Divide that by # of games in long tail — 200,000 – 10,001 = 189,999 560,000,000/198,999 = $2,847 is the AVERAGE yearly revenue of a mobile game in the long tail– with revenue rank > 10,000.
Question: How can you estimate the revenue of a mobile app based on its revenue rankings in App Annie?
There should be an exponential drop off, so if someone has done a study with a few data
My answer:
It is a power function with an upward kink at game rank #3-4
As far as games, these are my current estimated revenue run rate after 30% store cut worldwide on iOS and Google (note portion of revenue is 4:1 iOS to Google)
Big 3 — what I call the “and, of, the” of a Zipf power function.
Clash of Clans $1.8B (Supercell)
Puzzle and Dragons $1.6B (GungHo Online)
Candy Crush Saga $1.0B (King)
Next 7
Monster Strike $900M (Mixi)
Game of War: Fire Age $600M (Machine Age)
Brave Frontier $400M (Alim/gumi)
Hay Day $400M (Supercell)
Farm Heroes Saga $350M (King)
Battle in Warring Games $200M (Sumzap)
Pet Rescue Sage $175M (King)
Top 10 World Wide Mobile Games by Revenue Rank receive estimated 50% of mobile game app store revenue >>> $6.5B out of $11B
In contrast, I have estimated “long-tail” of mobile game app store revenue — games ranked 10,001 + to 240,000 receive around 5% of revenue.
This is a lot less that the original “long tail” estimates for book sales of book ranked 10,000+ of around 30%
Not much loss in cutting out the “long tail” in mobile games on the app store in return for great gain in app store discovery and quality of merchandise.
RIP Long Tail Justification for Online Store Inclusiveness: 2004:2014