The new Star Trek video game features a whole new plot and a reimagined version of the Gorn as antagonists. Those their credit, they also snagged Star Trek actors Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, John Cho, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban and Anton Yelchin to reprise their roles in the game.
SuperData released data for top digital game sales in March 2013, which we’re running as part of a monthly column on [a]list daily. Last month’s report is available here.
Joost van Dreunen, co-founder and CEO of SuperData, provided insight for the March report.
“In March, the total digital games category was more-or-less stable with only 1.1 percent compared to the same month last year. Total digital game sales in the U.S. were $875 million in March. After a decline last month, March showed a modest increase of 2.9 percent month-over-month.”
“Despite signs of healthy growth in several sectors, the year-over-year increase of the total digital games segment was modest at 1.3 percent. Especially the social games segment reached a new low of $124 million in total revenues for March 2013.”
“For the first time in over a year, the total number of monthly active social gamers in the U.S. dropped below 200 million. The loss of roughly 10 million MAUs signifies the departure of less committed players, as both conversion and ARPPU were up for the segment. Total revenues reached $124 million.”
“EA’s retirement of SimCity Social and Playfish, which it initially had acquired for almost $400 million in 2009, emphasizes the loss of interest in the space by major publishers. Despite a mostly static leaderboard, Facebook insists that it remains a healthy ecosystem, evidenced by the payouts to smaller and medium-sized developers.”
“Recovering from last month’s audience decline, free-to-play MMOs counted an additional 3 million players in March. At the same time monetization saw a slight improvement, causing overall revenues to grow to $195 million.”
“A refreshed offering with titles like Hawken (Meteor Entertainment), crowd-funded Strike Suit Zero (Born Ready Games) and MechWarrior Online (Infinite Game Publishing) maintain the overall health of the free-to-play market.”
“The pay-to-play MMO segment contracted and lost an estimated 289,000 subscribers in March. Overall revenues, however, remained relatively stable at $86 million.”
“The release of paper trading card game Hearthstone at PAX East by market leader Activision-Blizzard indicates the company is actively working on a strategy to bring new players into its shrinking base. Due to seasonal factors, however, we anticipate a further decline in April.”
“Despite a loss of attention among mobile gamers, the sector’s fundamentals remained strong as the average conversion rate reached 5.34 percent. Year-over-year mobile game revenues are up 7 percent at $157 million for the month of March.”
“Supercell dominated the U.S. mobile games market in March, with both Clash of Clans and HeyDay among the top grossing mobile titles. EA’s Simpson: Tapped Out appears to be on its way out of the top charts, as the dream of mobile casino titles like Big Fish Casino to claim one of the coveted top three spots is becoming more tangible.”
“The DLC segment remained stable with $312 million in total revenues in March. Compared to the same month last year, the DLC segment grew 19 percent.”
“In March, a lack of new inventory rendered the PC-side sluggish and offset the increase on console DLC, where Bioshock Infinite (2K Games) and Tomb Raider (Square Enix) triggered a 9 percent increase month-over-month.”
Newzoo and Distimo announced that they are extending and expanding their long running partnership. Newzoo will publish new rankings featuring the top 20 best performing countries in terms of mobile game revenues and will cover iPhone, iPad and PlayStore stores.
“Newzoo has been working with us and our data for two years now and knows this inside-out,” commented Vincent Hoogsteder, CEO at Distimo. “We believe the strength of this partnership is combining Newzoo’s expertise in the global games market with our data to put our store data into a broader perspective for leading game companies that use our AppIQ data.”
“Distimo’s unique tech and methodology provides us and our clients with the most accurate and complete data on app stores available,” adds Peter Warman, CEO at Newzoo. “The new AppIQ dashboard now also makes it the most actionable app data on the planet, where others still rely on huge Excel files with no trending insights. Mixing this data with our own research across all business models, screens and continents is where we see the biggest value added. ”
Some of the key takeaways from the March report is that Korea tops the charts for PlayStore just ahead of Japan, while the U.S. is still number one for iOS. China has also surpassed U.K. in iOS spending based on the revenues of the top 200 grossing game.
The winners of the eighth annual Game Marketing Awards were announced recently. Among the top awarded publishers were Microsoft for Halo 4, Activision for Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Ubisoft for Assassin’s Creed III and Just Dance 4.
*No bronze place was awarded for this category
Twitter will be rolling out a new app designed to find popular tracks and emerging artists. Using #music users can go to artists’ profiles to see which music they follow, listen to songs by those artists and tweet songs right from the app.
The new app is powered by iTunes and Tjpigj users will hear previews from iTunes when exploring music in the app by default. Subscribers to Rdio and Spotify can log into their accounts to enjoy full tracks that are available in those respective catalogs and Twitter said it will continue to explore and add other music service providers.
Users can navigate to listen to songs that have been tweeted by people and artists they follow on Twitter using #NowPlaying. People can download Twitter #music from the App Store today, or use the web version at music.twitter.com. {link no longer active}
Interpret released its semi-annual GameByte study which says that the average gamer on smartphones and tablets spends $0.92 per month on full game apps and only $0.79 per month on mobile in-game items. By contrast, free-to-play MMO gamers spend about $3.25 each month, subscription MMO players spend $4.25 a month and console gamers spend $10.40 a month.
“In the U.S., 48 million people are actively engaged in smartphone and tablet gaming, more than double the 23 million playing free-to-play MMOs on PC,” said Jason Coston, senior analyst at Interpret. “But the average spend is so much weaker for mobile games that the two business models generate comparable revenues. The mobile game market may be a pretty big cookie jar, but the neck is rather narrow, the cookies are small, and there are a lot of hands trying to reach into the jar.”
While there’s a wide user base for mobile games, only 47 percent of U.S. mobile gamers paid for a full game app over a six-month period and only 21 percent paid for in-game items. While the console user base is smaller, 75 percent of retail console gamers paid for a physical console or PC game during that same period.
Microsoft revealed the revenue for the Entertainment and Devices Division increased by 56 percent year-over-year to $2.53 billion during the quarter ending March 31, 2013, with operating income of $342 million compared to a net loss last year during the same period of $228 million. Separately, Windows Phone revenue also increased by $259 million, including patent licensing revenue and increased sales of Windows Phone licenses.
Microsoft noted that Xbox Live now has over 46 million members worldwide, an 18 percent increase from the prior year period. Xbox 360 platform revenue in particular increased 55 percent to $641 million with a Video Game Deferral recognition of $380 million and higher Xbox Live revenue.
According to a report, Microsoft is working on a touch-enabled watch device. This would put the company in the running with Apple and Samsung for making a new class of wearable technology.
These supplier executives in Asia were said to have shipped components for a potential watch-style device. Microsoft’s research and development team met up with one of the supplier executives in Redmond, Washington.
However, what is not clear is whether or not Microsoft will move forward with any plans. Microsoft, for its part, declined to comment.
“We see growing demand for wearable gadgets as the size of the smartphone has become too big to carry around,” said RBS analyst Wanli Wang. “A smart watch that is compatible with a smartphone and other electronics devices would be attractive to consumers.”
Microsoft is said to be looking into smaller devices, like a Surface tablet with 7-inch displays. Gartner research firm expects the market for wearable smart electronics to be a $10 billion industry by 2016.
Source: WSJ.com
Capcom has announced that they are bringing the Monster Hunter franchise to China. This new game will be called Monster Hunter Online and will be a free-to-play MMO.
Monster Hunter Online will be published in China by Tencent. The new game was built using Crytek’s CryEngine3.
There will be an open beta for Monster Hunter Online in June 2013. There are currently no announcements over whether the game will release outside of China.
Developer Quantic Dream has taken risks over the years, never releasing sequels to their games and always experimenting with new cinematic gameplay elements. With that in mind, Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumiere gave a keynote speech at Digital Dragons saying that experimental games can still be profitable, as evidenced by Heavy Rain.
“These projects have been and are profitable, to some extent,” said de Fondaumiere . “I’ll give you one example that I know about: Heavy Rain. Let’s say it’s $22 million to produce. With marketing it’s maybe $30 million. With distribution, $40 million. Sony earned $100 million with the game, so it’s very profitable. It’s the sort of margin that most publishers would strive for, for any game.”
“Heavy Rain was the ninth best selling game in the year it was released, so we made the top ten. It’s true of Journey, too,” he added. “I don’t know the details of the budget, but I know from speaking to members of Thatgamecompany that it was a profitable game for them and for Sony. We should stop thinking that innovation rhymes with unprofitable.”
