Not sure quite how "indie" this is, but it could be interesting / useful to indie devs anyway:
Seattle, Washington - Toy Defense, the classic tower defense game set in World War I developed by Melesta Games has been out for more than a year now. So far Toy Defense has seen more than 10 million downloads worldwide.
The game supports both iOS and Android devices, and it is available all over the world through the Apple App Store, Google Play App store and on Amazon App Store. Players can enjoy social versions of Toy Defense in the two major CIS social networks, and just recently it became available as a Facebook game for users all over the world.
Toy Defense came out a year ago and this is long enough to sum up the results and make some conclusions. Melesta Games is kindly willing to share them along with statistical data.
The success of Toy Defense is clearly shown by the fact that is was placed in the Top 10 on the Apple App Store charts in Games category in 69 countries. According to numbers of users with iOS devices, who get Toy Defense from the Apple App Store, the game is most popular in the USA (19%), China (17%) and Russia (14%). Users from the European Union are mainly from Germany (5%), France (4%) and the United Kingdom (4%). Players from Asian countries come from Thailand (3%) and South Korea (3%). In the rest of the countries where Toy Defense is available, the percentage of users is lower.
The data from Google Play App store doesn't differ much, just with 2 exceptions: in China, Toy Defense is unavailable through Google Play, and the share of South Korea is higher in Google Play than in Apple App Store.
For developers, it is not only the number of users which matters, but also profitability of the application. The revenue from Toy Defense comes from different sources: in-app purchases (87%), purchasing the game (10%), and advertising (3%). The overall percentage of purchases is shared between Apple App Store (77%), Google Play App Store (13%), Amazon App Store (2%), and social networks (8%). It is noticeable that the Google Play App store share in the total income is constantly growing.
The analysis of players' payments shows that users from Russia, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan mostly play Toy Defense on iOS devices and make all purchases via the Apple App Store. The situation is reversed in Australia, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and Ireland, where gamers prefer Android devices and use Google Play Store for purchasing. Players' payments from Russia and the United States comprise 28% and 22% respectively of the total income. The share of user transactions from Germany is 6%, United Kingdom, China, France and Canada have 4% each, and Australia, Japan and South Korea - 2% per country.
Top ARPU rate in Apple App Store is in the following countries: Scandinavian region (Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden), UAE Kuwait, Kazakhstan and Russia, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Japan. ARPU in China is four times lower than average, but it doesn't reflect on the income from China, due to the total number of Chinese players. In Google Play Top ARPU is also formed by the same set of countries: Scandinavian region, Arabic countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland, and South Korea.
Only 3% of total profits are provided by advertising. At first Tapjoy advertising gave good results, but over time the results deteriorated, so now Chartboost advertising is used. The likely cause of the low advertising revenue is a lack of developer attention paid to it, in the case of Toy Defense.
To sum up all the figures, several conclusions need to be drawn. Peak high popularity rate of Toy Defense in some countries is due to the game being set in World War I. The users from those countries that took part in the war show more interest in Toy Defense than in the countries untouched by war. It is interesting to note some of the cultural and economic characteristics, such as the fact that most downloads in South Korea are made from Google Play, perhaps because Samsung devices are the most widely used there. A similar situation is found in the USA, where Apple devices are popular, the majority of Toy Defense downloads are from the Apple App Store.
62% of the revenue comes from the tablet version of the game and 38% from smartphones. It is noted that the size of the screen of device is correlated with ARPU (the larger the screen, the higher the ARPU). The newness of device also affects ARPU (the newer is the device, the higher ARPU). From Melesta Games' point of view this indicates the need to focus on supporting the latest models, so gradually the support of Melesta Games products on older devices is being withdrawn.
According to observations, tablet users are more inclined to pay for the game in one way or another. This can be explained by the fact that the phone is a necessary thing, and a tablet can be considered status symbol. So tablet users often just have more resources that they are willing to spend playing.
Despite the fact that the rate of premium content revenue is relatively small, Melesta Games thinks that this model of distribution is not yet exhausted. Like the majority of developers and publishers, Melesta Games is moving to developing free-to-play apps, although premium versions will not be abandoned.
Melesta Games team hopes that this information, derived from its experience, will be useful for other game developers.
Melesta Games: http://www.melesta-games.com/
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