The Blog - Ninja Metrics^®

Marketing on Twitter for Game Developers

It can be overwhelming when choosing a social network to promote your game with, since there are so many options - including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Facebook is usually the first choice for many people, because of its huge 1+ billion user base, established advertising platform, and large focus on visual content.

Indie Game Marketing: Landing Pages

Once the development process of your video game is complete, it’s time to start thinking about marketing - since just putting your game out in the wild among the hundred of thousands of other games won’t do any good.

App Store Optimization is a great place to start (see here for more on that) once your game is live on the App Store, and you can even keep things minimal by pitching directly to Apple. But one of the most effective ways to kick off your marketing campaign is by creating a landing page for your game, since it serves two very important purposes: giving players a place to learn about your game and driving conversions.

Best of all, a landing page can be set up well before other marketing efforts to build hype about your video game and provide updates. Landing pages are also a great resource for future investors, journalists and bloggers since they’re meant to be a concise, all-in-one place for information about your game.

Overcoming a Poor Multiplayer Mobile Game Experience

Mobile gaming is the currently the fastest growing video game industry, as revenue tripled last year to over $16B. Since smartphones and tablets have the capability to be connected to the virtual world from anywhere, they can be a great opportunity for players who want a convenient multiplayer experience without having to be confined to an at-home console.

Unfortunately, many multiplayer mobile games don’t provide the same lag-free and real-time experience that their console counterparts do - and this can be tough on the developer who is often only given one chance to get it right, due to low player retention in the flooded mobile games market.

Top Video Games Spending Countries

Games market research firms GlobalCollect and Newzoo recently compiled a report of the top 20 countries sorted by average transaction value in video gaming, based on information collected from April-June 2014.

The number one games spending country based on millions of monthly transactions was the Netherlands, closely followed by Switzerland and Australia in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.  Surprisingly, the United States, which currently holds the title for the largest global games market, didn’t even make the list. The report further broke down video game transactions by payment method - with credit card transactions dominating the list, and eWallets starting to become a popular form of payment. Take a look at the full report

Mobile Games Market Facts

A recent poll of over ten thousand app developers has revealed a bunch of new facts about where the current mobile gaming market stands. Not surprisingly, many of the facts have revealed how difficult it can be to make money from a mobile game, due to the increasing competition.

One of the studies showed that 33% of all app developers make mobile games, but more than 57% of those games make less than $500 a month. But even though income is down, the overall app store revenues are dominated by mobile gaming (over 80% of app store revenues are attributed to the games category).

So how can developers find success in a flooded market? According to the poll, game developers say that experience is the most important factor for success - the more games a developer has shipped, the more likely they are to get a decent income out of the industry.

Mobile Game Market: Who’s Dominating?

While Android and iOS are the most popular platforms for mobile gaming, who comes out on top? Just in raw number of downloads, Google Play is winningthe war by over 60% - but what matters most is the bottom line, and who’s making the most money.

Thanks to recent mobile games spending in China and Japan, Apple’s App Store makes 80% more revenue than Google Play, contributing to the majority of last year’s $16B in global mobile games spending. If you’re looking to make some money from the mobile games industry boom, you’re probably best off sticking with iOS as your primary mobile platform.

You can read more about how the US, Japan and China recently came to a deal that resulted in a huge revenue gain for the iOS platform, here on VentureBeat.

Mobile Games Dominance

A new study by Midia Research has found some surprising numbers for the mobile apps world - nearly 85% of the top grossing apps on both the App Store and Google Play store are video games.

The study was conducted by analyzing the top 50 grossing apps on each store in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. Coming in second place for the highest grossing app category was social networking at 4.1%.

You can read more about Midia’s report on app market trends here on the Guardian.

2016 Mobile Game Revenues

A new report released by Juniper Research has projected that the mobile video games market value will surpass $29B by 2016 - a 38% increase since this year’s total mobile game revenues of $20.9B.