Sega director of online operations Ethan Einhorn notes that gaining visibility in the mobile market is challenging and increasingly expensive. To that end, Einhorn sees paid user acquisition and cross-promotion as mandatory practices now in the field.
“Both strategies are important to use,” Einhorn said. “I think that you can’t not do paid acquisition at this point if you’re a major publisher. I think that’s a key part of driving users, and if you’re a major publisher, you’re in a good position to shuttle players from one game to the other through cross-sell. I think that’s valuable. But at the end of the day, quality is the most important piece to getting people engaged and willing to play the game. That’s what makes something truly viral.”
Einhorn also doesn’t see free-to-play going away. “I don’t think people are going to get tired of getting things for free,” he said. “We’re still very early in what is an extremely subtle business model. Free-to-play is not an easy or simple thing; it’s very complex. And we as an industry are just working that out. So I would expect that over the next few years, as we work it out and the right balance between gameplay and monetization and those aspects are better understood, we’ll see an improvement in the revenue side as well.”
Source: GamesIndustry.biz
