2015
Company
Documents about 2015
Mobile Gaming Leaders: April 2016
This analysis examines the mobile gaming landscape for April 2016, focusing on download trends and top-performing titles across the U.S. App Store and Google Play.
- The indie title 'slither.io' dominated the mobile gaming market in April 2016, securing the No. 1 spot for downloads across both iOS and Google Play with over eight million total installs.
- Worldwide App Store game downloads grew 16.6 percent year-over-year in April 2016, rising from 502 million to 585 million, while U.S. downloads grew by 14.2 percent over the same period.
- Disney successfully captured market share with the launch of 'Disney Crossy Road,' which generated over 3.6 million U.S. installs and ranked as the second most-downloaded game across both platforms.
Facts and Figures about Games Industry in Nordic Countries
The Nordic games industry serves as a prominent model for international development, characterized by significant economic growth, high-profile acquisitions, and robust government support.
- The Finnish games industry experienced rapid growth between 2009 and 2015, with employment increasing from 1,020 to 2,700 jobs and annual turnover rising from €900 million to €2.4 billion.
- Sweden dominates the Nordic games market, accounting for 36% of the region's total volume and value, followed by Norway at 25%, and Denmark and Finland at approximately 20% each.
- High-profile acquisitions of Nordic firms include Microsoft’s €2.18 billion purchase of Mojang in 2014 and Activision Blizzard’s €5.15 billion acquisition of King.
Putting App Store Revenues Into Context
The primary thesis of this analysis is that Apple’s potential implementation of search advertising within the App Store is not driven by revenue generation, but rather by strategic ecosystem management.
- Apple's App Store platform fees generated approximately $4.29 billion in 2014, representing only 1.8% of the company's total $234 billion revenue in 2015.
- Even if Apple successfully monetized App Store search ads at a scale comparable to Facebook's mobile advertising business, the resulting revenue would increase Apple's total annual income by less than 10%.
- Apple uses its 'featuring' placement as a strategic tool to curate cultural phenomena and drive hardware adoption, a lever that would be weakened if prominence were sold to the highest bidder.
2016 CESA General Consumer Survey Report
The 2016 CESA General Consumer Survey Report provides a comprehensive analysis of gaming habits and lifestyle trends among the Japanese population.
- The total number of active game players across all platforms in Japan is estimated at 43.36 million.
- Smartphone and tablet gaming leads the market with 30.99 million active players, significantly outpacing other hardware categories.
- The domestic market for home console gaming includes 52.24 million hardware owners, 32 million active users, and 15.39 million continuous players.
Mobile Gaming and Smartphone Penetration
The mobile gaming industry faces a complex paradox characterized by rising user engagement alongside stagnant app discovery and market saturation.
- In 2015, 64% of US mobile phone users played mobile games at least once per month, a figure projected to grow to 77% by 2020.
- Smartphone ownership in the US grew by 8% year-over-year between March 2014 and March 2015, closely mirroring the 11.7% increase in mobile gamers during the same period.
- Growth in smartphone penetration is unevenly distributed, with the most significant gains occurring among teenagers and individuals over age 45, while growth among the 18–34 demographic remains modest.
Silicon Valley and the Geographic Distribution of Hit Mobile Games
Silicon Valley maintains a dominant position in the global consumer technology sector, yet it is notably absent from the top tier of mobile gaming developers.
- While Silicon Valley companies produce 50% of the world's top-downloaded apps across all genres, they account for 0% of the top-downloaded mobile games.
- Silicon Valley's share of top-grossing mobile games is significantly lower than its share of the broader app economy, representing only 10% of top-grossing gaming apps compared to 20% of top-grossing apps overall.
- In the US market, Silicon Valley developers are responsible for 80% of top-downloaded apps across all categories, yet they hold no presence among the top-downloaded games.
iOS Gaming Leaders: December 2015
The mobile gaming market experienced significant growth in December 2015, characterized by a surge in both installation volume and consumer spending on Apple’s App Store.
- In December 2015, worldwide iOS gaming downloads grew 20% month-over-month to approximately 614 million, while total gaming revenue reached nearly $1 billion, an 18% increase from November.
- Clash of Clans reclaimed the top-grossing spot on iOS from Game of War in both U.S. and worldwide markets during December 2015.
- Piano Tiles 2 was the most downloaded game globally and in the U.S. for December 2015, maintaining the No. 1 position in all iPhone categories for the six days leading up to Christmas.
Are Games the Future of the App Economy?
The app economy has experienced significant growth, underscored by Apple’s report of over $20 billion in App Store spending during 2015 and cumulative developer payouts reaching $40 billion.
- Apple App Store revenue reached $20 billion in 2015, with cumulative developer payouts hitting $40 billion, one-third of which was generated in 2015 alone.
- Annual developer payouts grew by 40% year-over-year, rising from $10 billion in 2014 to $14 billion in 2015.
- While free-to-play games continue to dominate the top-grossing charts, non-gaming apps increased their presence in the Top 20 list from 5% in 2013 to 20% by January 1, 2016.
This Could Be Us: Networked Intimacy in Single-Player Games
This extended abstract examines how three single-player games use simulated social media to explore networked intimacy: Christine Love's Don't Take It Personally Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story (2011), Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris' Redshirt (2013), and Robert Yang's Cobra Club (2015).
- The paper argues that three single-player games—Christine Love's Don't Take It Personally Babe, It Just Ain't Your Story (2011), Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris' Redshirt (2013), and Robert Yang's Cobra Club (2015)—use the interface and narrative conventions of digital platforms to explore identity, privacy, surveillance, and consent.
- Don't Take It Personally Babe frames the player as a teacher with access to students' public and private online lives, exposing how networked devices enable warmth alongside gossip, hypocrisy, and abuse of trust, while questioning the agency that single-player games promise.
- Redshirt uses a Facebook-style interface on a doomed space station, where escape depends on cultivating powerful contacts, critiquing the instrumental, gamified treatment of relationships on social platforms.
Paratextuality 2.0: Updating Genette's Framework for Complex Game Systems
The paper argues that the concept of "paratext," borrowed from Gérard Genette's literary framework and widely adopted in game studies since Consalvo's 2007 introduction, has become so broadly applied to nearly every video game epiphenomenon, from manuals and patch notes to trailers and online discussions, that it has lost…
- The paper argues that 'paratext,' borrowed from Gérard Genette and widely applied in game studies since Consalvo's 2007 introduction, has lost analytical precision because it now covers nearly every video game ancillary, from manuals and patch notes to trailers and online discussions.
- The core problem identified is Genette's linking of a typology of textual relationships to a typology of texts, which causes ancillary materials to be treated as subordinate merely because of their relationship to a main work, a hierarchy the author considers anachronistic given the prominence of backstories and transmedia storytelling in contemporary games.
- The author proposes abandoning the term 'paratext' and instead analyzing paratextuality as a relationship, specifying the sources of textual transcendence in the links connecting texts to social and historical context rather than relying on a vague notion of ancillary status.
Sensor Tower Gains Richer App Update Timeline and Faster-Than-Ever Store Intelligence
Sensor Tower has implemented significant upgrades to its App Intelligence and Store Intelligence platforms to improve data granularity, processing speed, and tracking capabilities.
- Sensor Tower expanded its App Intelligence platform to track 14 new update types for iOS apps and 6 new update types for Android apps.
- The App Update Timeline now provides granular tracking of metadata changes, including specific insights into Top In-App Purchases and Related Apps for iOS.
- Store Intelligence performance has been upgraded to significantly increase loading speeds for large datasets and long date ranges.
iOS Gaming Leaders: November 2015
This analysis examines the performance of iOS gaming applications during November 2015, focusing on download volume, revenue generation, and growth trends across both the United States and global markets.
- Ketchapp’s game 'Twist' became the most downloaded iOS game globally and in the U.S. in November 2015, significantly outperforming new releases from major publishers like King and Machine Zone.
- Machine Zone’s 'Game of War' maintained the top position for global and U.S. revenue, while Supercell’s 'Clash of Clans' experienced negative month-over-month revenue growth for the second consecutive time.
- The top 10 revenue-generating games showed a stagnant trend, with half of the titles experiencing month-over-month revenue declines and no new entries appearing on the top 10 lists.