Today we are pleased to announce our partnership with international games market research firm Newzoo to provide unique monthly data on game sales and downloads across all Apple App Stores. In this partnership we will combine the demographics of worldwide gamers that Newzoo collects through its Gamers Surveys with in-depth app store data from Distimo focused on games. This combination provides excellent insight in important developments in the gaming industry.
Combined research results of Newzoo and Distimo shows that games represent the largest single app category on Apple App Stores, and account for half of the downloads of both free and paid apps. In total, more than five million games a day were downloaded in the US and six European territories combined during March 2011. The 63 million iOS gamers in these seven countries downloaded an average of 2.5 games per month.
The rise of in-game spending
Offering gamers the opportunity to spend money in-game is becoming a must-have feature for game developers. While some 88% of downloaded top 300 iOS games are now offered for free, in-game purchases (within both free and paid games) generated approximately two-fifth of total revenues. In-game spending on free games grossed 40% of the total revenues for iPhone/iPod Touch and 32% for iPad.
63 million iOS gamers
The National Gamers Survey, held in March 2011 at the time of the launch of the iPad 2 in Europe, shows that there are now more than 60 million iOS gamers in total in the US and key European countries. Between six and seven percent of the online population has an iPhone in the US, UK, France and Germany, while Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium trail with three to four percent. The share of iPhone owners who play iOS games is between 50 and 75%. Nearly 15 million Americans who play games on mobile phones or tablets actively use an iPad, and in the European countries this total is seven million. The iPad is ahead of the PlayStation Portable in terms of the total number of people playing games on a specific device.
Distimo and Newzoo form partnership to provide detailed monthly data service
The monthly data includes both daily and monthly download volumes in absolute numbers for the top 300 free as well as paid games (total and per game), and the USD value of downloads (total and per game ranking category) for each of the individual App Stores (iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad and Mac). It also includes a breakdown of revenues in terms of paid downloads and in-game spending in both free and paid games. Finally, the dataset also provides a monthly ranking of the top 300 free and top 300 paid games, its publishers and the average selling price. Newzoo includes survey data on mobile gamer demographics and all app stores, including Android to complement the new service. Access to the data will be facilitated online through the Newzoo Data Explorer. A limited number of companies are welcome to join as launch clients as of today. The service will be commercially available as of June 1, 2011. The countries covered in the initial phase are US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium.
For more information on this monthly data service, please contact Peter Warman via peter@newzoo.com or +31 (0) 20 6635816.
Vincent Hoogsteder