2015
Company
Documents about 2015
Facts and Figures about Games Industry in Nordic Countries
The Nordic games industry serves as a benchmark for the Flemish sector, and this May 2016 digest from the Flemish Games Association condenses a territory report originally published by MCV.
- 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.
Mobile Gaming Leaders: March 2016
Supercell's Clash Royale dominated March 2016 mobile game downloads in the United States and worldwide, according to Sensor Tower's Store Intelligence estimates covering March 1 to 31, 2016.
- Supercell’s Clash Royale was the most downloaded mobile game worldwide across both the App Store and Google Play in March 2016, achieving more than double the installs of the second-place title, Stack.
- Global iOS game downloads grew 16% year-over-year in March 2016, rising from 546 million to 633 million, while U.S. iOS game downloads increased 12% to 162 million.
- Miniclip’s Basketball Stars saw significant success on iOS with 6 million worldwide downloads, ranking as the second most successful new title on the U.S. App Store behind Clash Royale.
Putting App Store Revenues Into Context
Apple's potential introduction of App Store search ads is often justified on revenue grounds, but that rationale does not hold up against the scale of Apple's business.
- 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 Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association (CESA) announced the March 2016 publication of its General Consumer Survey Report, a 240-page volume covering Japanese gaming users and non-users.
- 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
Mobile gaming has become near-ubiquitous in the US, but the growth driving it is uneven and raises discovery challenges for developers.
- 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.
iOS Gaming Leaders: January 2016
Global iOS game downloads rose 12.61 percent in January 2016 over December 2015, climbing from an estimated 614 million to 692 million installs.
- Global iOS game downloads reached 692 million in January 2016, a 12.61% increase over the 614 million installs recorded in December 2015.
- Worldwide iOS gaming revenue totaled $969 million in January 2016, representing a 2.91% decline from the $998 million generated in the previous month.
- Machine Zone's 'Mobile Strike' entered the U.S. revenue top 10 for the first time, placing eighth and marking the publisher's second title to reach that milestone alongside 'Game of War - Fire Age'.
Silicon Valley and the Geographic Distribution of Hit Mobile Games
Silicon Valley dominates the overall mobile app economy but is conspicuously underrepresented among hit mobile games, according to an analysis of App Annie's 2015 mobile retrospective.
- 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
Sensor Tower's December 2015 review of the iOS App Store games category finds strong holiday-season growth in both installs and spending.
- 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?
Apple's holiday 2015 App Store figures frame an examination of whether games will remain the dominant force in the app economy.
- 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.
The Mainstreaming of US Games Journalism
This paper examines how mainstream American newspapers and lifestyle outlets have come to take video games seriously, a shift that was far from assured a decade ago.
- Mainstream American newspapers and lifestyle outlets have come to take video games seriously, a shift the authors argue was far from assured a decade before the study.
- The paper's central hypothesis is that mainstream journalists handle the tensions among gamers, the industry, and the press differently from enthusiast writers, due to distinct ideological, stylistic, and practical traditions.
- Mainstream reporting appears to lack the self-reflection tradition found in enthusiast games writing, which is why the study focuses on journalistic rather than critical coverage.
This Could Be Us: Networked Intimacy in Single-Player Games
This extended abstract argues that single-player games remain relevant in a networked era because they can explore the complexities of online intimacy in ways multiplayer and social games seem unwilling or unable to.
- 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.
Charismatic Leadership and Digital Games
Digital games have long cast players as commanders who act decisively on critical problems or managers who organise processes toward known ends.
- The paper argues that the media through which audiences encounter leadership shape how they understand it, rather than studying skills players gain from games.
- Its central thesis is that different media formats support different models of charismatic leadership, based on Max Weber's theory: early twentieth-century cinema centres the charismatic individual with little role for followers, while serialised comics, television and digital games give the inner circle a much larger part.
- Digital games, especially role-playing titles, let players occupy a leader whose authority rests on normative compliance, drawing on Etzioni's typology of coercive, calculative and normative compliance.