The State of Video Games in America

There’s no doubt that video gaming has become a staple of american culture. With so many consoles and mobile devices to choose from, and a plethora of PC components to modify your gaming rig, games have become more accessible than ever.

Why do Apps Fail?

As the mobile apps market continues to grow, developers’ chances of becoming successful decrease with stiffer competition. And the growth is not letting up anytime soon - by 2017, the number of app downloads is expected to reach 269 billion (that’s almost 40 app downloads per person in the world!).

Monthly App Downloads Decline

Fiksu just released its latest monthly report on App Store downloads for the top 200 free iOS apps, revealing that the number of daily App Store downloads dropped by nearly one million from January to February, for a total of 9.7 million daily downloads.

Media Relations Tips for Devs

If it’s your first time doing so, speaking to the media during an interview can be an extremely nerve-wracking experience - especially if you haven’t properly prepared for the interview. Your composure and responses to the media can have a huge impact on how the public perceives you, the company, and your video game.

Media relations is a very important part of your video game business that shouldn’t be overlooked, since it allows you an opportunity to influence the public and gain exposure for your game. Fortunately, if you prepare beforehand with enough practice, media relations can be easy and stress free.

Nintendo Coming to Mobile

Amidst recent rumors and speculation, Nintendo has finally announced that it’s coming to smartphones. Nintendo and DeNA Co., a fellow Japanese game company, will be working together to bring some of video gaming’s most iconic characters to consumers’ mobile devices starting this Fall.

As part of the deal, Nintendo now owns 10% of DeNA, while DeNA owns 1.24% of Nintendo. The announcement has been a huge surprise, because in recent years Nintendo has campaigned heavily against mobile gaming and refused to license its characters, fearing it would devalue the importance of the company.

Since the mobile gaming market is expected to surpass console sales by $4B later this year, it seems like a logical and smart move for Nintendo. Also part of the announcement was Nintendo’s next console, codenamed NX. Nintendo is keeping details about the NX under tight surveillance, but we should hear more about it in the coming months.

Apple Watch Announcement

Earlier this week Apple held its “Spring Forward” event, announcing final details on their upcoming smartwatch, the Apple Watch. The company also unveiled a brand new, ultra thin and light MacBook (how much thinner can they really get? Take a look here), as well as a standalone Netflix-like subscription for HBO (Game of Thrones fans rejoice!).

With this year’s Game Developers Conference now in full swing, it’s time to take a look at what has happened so far and what’s in store for the rest of the week.

What is the Game Developers Conference? GDC is an annual conference where game developers and video game industry professionals converge in San Francisco every March, for a week full of sessions from key industry leaders, video game announcements, game development tool announcements and more.

AppsFlyer Partners with Ninja Metrics

Announcement

We are excited to announce that AppsFlyer, the robust mobile ad attribution platform you’ve come to depend on, is now working with Ninja Metrics, the advanced predictive analytics company, to bring developers a new way of measuring the value of social connections.

Social Value gives developers a more accurate view of their most influential - and therefore most valuable - users, known as Social Whales. These Social Whales are the big decision makers in your app, and their spending creates a virtual ripple effect throughout your user base.

With our mobile measurement platform, attribution and analytics app marketers, brands and agencies are empowered to measure mobile user acquisition across all media sources. Ninja Metrics adds a social dimension into the equation with their True Ad Value metric, a more accurate value of ad attribution based on player influence. True Ad Value is based on Ninja’s extensive research and development of Social Value, which measures the monetary value of social connections.

The Global Social Value Benchmark Report 2015 

Mobile to Overtake Consoles

Mobile gaming has exploded in the past few years, with large thanks to countries like China and Korea adopting the platform. Meanwhile, console sales have been somewhat rocky as the PS4 and Xbox One are still relatively new.

It also doesn’t help that consoles largely focus on AAA titles, which have seen huge budget cuts in the past few years with the increasing competition of indie games.

The gaming landscape is changing so quickly, that a new report by research firm Newzoo has predicted that mobile game sales will overtake console game sales this year. Mobile games are expected to generate over $30 billion in sales by the end of 2015, nearly $4 billion more than console games.

For more insight on the report, take a look at this article on PocketGamer.

The Importance of Day 1 F2P Players

F2P MMO’s are great games to measure data from, because of their large global user base and transactions. A new study by SuperData Research has taken a look at player retention in F2P MMO’s, and the results are interesting.

Over the last few months, we’ve covered what video games analytics are, how to set up a platform, and basic game analytics definitions.

Now that you have a general understanding of game analytics, it’s time to learn about the types of players who have the biggest impact on your game - and how to find them. Most developers tend to focus on their core players and a B2C-type relationship. While those types of relationships are important, player-to-player (or C2C) relationships are even more powerful.

Facebook’s & Apple’s Games of the Year

On Wednesday, Facebook announced their favorite Facebook and mobile games of the year for 2014. Facebook chose Cookie Jam as their top game of the year, a puzzle-based game where players try to match ingredients and complete recipes. As for mobile games, take a look at Facebook’s top picks below - most of which were dominated by the base-building strategy (think Clash of Clans) type of games:

1. Boom Beach
2. Crazy Taxi
3. Disco Bees
4. Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff
5. Star Wars: Commander

Earlier this week, Apple released their mobile picks of the year (including both apps and games). Apple’s favorite mobile games included the wildly popular Monument Valley, Threes!, Device 6, Blek and Leo’s Fortune - all games that we love here at Ninja Metrics. What are your favorite mobile games from 2014? Share your picks in the comments below.