These are not "Tech Demos", these are full-fledged games, not scoped down mobile only versions, where the respective developers have switch their engine to support this platform.
Moreover, I said it before, but the report on the website provides two different projections;
Our calculations, based on Appfigures estimates, suggest that under 3,000 people have paid $49.99 to play Assassin’s Creed Mirage on iPhone since it launched on June 6. It has been downloaded approximately 123k times, with gross revenue of $138k to date, says Appfigures.
Appfigures estimates suggest Resident Evil 4 has been downloaded 357k times, with revenue estimated to be $208k. Based on the game’s $29.99 price tag this suggests that roughly 7,000 people have paid to unlock the full game in its six months on the market.
Appmagic, another data firm, has more optimistic estimates. Its data suggests Assassin’s Creed Mirage stands at around $221k revenue (not including Apple and Google’s 30%) from 279k downloads, meaning around 5,750 players have paid to unlock the full game. Resident Evil 4 is on around 710k lifetime downloads since launch six months ago, having earned Capcom around $347k to date. That suggests that just 15,000 people have paid $29.99 to unlock the full game in its six months of release.
Just look at the number and the relative difference, some of them are double
. These games at launch have had sales and still have sales, so it's not like you can't find a good deal on them relative to other stores; Death Stranding is $19.99 at the moment and RE4 is $29.99, both of them are cross-buy (iPad, Mac) so if these projects are based on only iPhone numbers, which again don't cover much of the market. Then that's skewed imo.
I was already curious on how much of a success they were, because neither Capcom nor 505 Games have reported yet on the actual numbers, but I'm seeing this article in multiple places now with full trust in their numbers, and it's not really unsurprising that this release isn't a giga million seller hits for the platform, but the conclusion on them being a bomb is something the website describes as their own. It's all relative to w/e the publishers expect.
Of course consumer expectations matter too, if the performance of the port isn't up to par and the higher relative price of apps compared to a mostly f2p model doesn't work out, then it's mostly a dead-end, but for now I'll just cherish what's being released so far.
Questionable methodology aside, I feel like this was fairly obvious and something Apple and the developers already took into account. They're going to have an uphill battle making premium games of this calibre enticing for their audience but you have to start somewhere. And even if this ultimately goes nowhere: If Apple who has more money than god is fine with footing the bill on a version of the game that a handful of people get to enjoy and these devs in turn get to make their engines compatible with mobile hardware... who cares?
It's not only mobile hardware, most of these releases are done in-house and having support for one device in the MacOS platform, means all of them are supported due to their shared architecture. Essentially what Apple is promising is a full vertical integration of your game and engine for all of their devices, and if w/e next base iPhone can be the baseline, then this strategy could pay off if the experience and price is good enough. The GPU in these devices are "mobile hardware", but the feature set is getting competent enough to not be seen that way any more.
Indie devs are still doomed though, because Apple devices are expensive, and there's recurring dev licence fees.
mobilegamer.biz
www.eurogamer.net
