By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
silicon on 18 January 2011
Edit Thread
Mummelmann said:
RVDondaPC said:

The casual market does not bring in more money, especially over time(Atleast not on Video game consoles.) Not only does their software bring in less revenue per game sold(they're generally priced at $50 or $40 to start, compared to $60) but the core market is mostly split between the PS3 and 360. If you add up the software sold by the two "Core" consoles they far outweigh the Wii. Just because the most successful company caters to the casual audience, doesn't mean it's the biggest market nor the most important. It was just the most ignored and thus had the biggest opportunity to be captured by a single company. The biggest software sellers for casual games (Wii sports and now Kinect Adventures), don't even bring in any revenue. They are bundled for free. Compare that to the Call of Duty games which probably sells 75% of their stock at full price ($60 in America). So not only is there more core games sold, but for every 5 full priced core games, 6 casual games have to be sold to match the revenue. Don't know how the pricing works around the rest of the world but I could imagine it's somewhat similar. The "core" consoles also cost much more money to purchase than the "casual" machine, thus bringing in even more revenue. 

Now that the competition for the "casual" market is heating up, the core market will become a goldmine for whoever caters to it the most in the coming years and coming generation. MS is being smart with their Kinect, especially short term, but i hope they don't forget about the core audience. Or else they will regret it when they all go back to the playstation brand. 

Actually (concerning things like Farmville and the like), the most casual games are either free or cost a few bucks on appstores, the 95% number someone mentioned must be pertaining to these gamers and they certainly do not bring in more money save for revenue from ads. Casual gamers spend a lot less on gaming in general (and with plug-in's such as adblock the ads are losing ground in the revenue stake as well), probably less than 10% of that of a "hardcore" gamer. If you sell and iPhone game to two million users for 5$ a pop, that's still pocket change compared to a lot of bigger games on consoles (yes, console games cost a lot more to develop but they are also generally more profitable). Dozens of small developers going for the mobile market (Ngage and others for instance) went bankrupt practically overnight and the best deal in all of it is for the owner of the platform or appstore (like Apple charging 30% royalties for almost everything they distribute and sell over their closed store concept).

The casual market is vast though and can certainly bring in a lot of money but they are fickle and can't be relied on as a source of income longterm (like you said) and that remains the biggest challenge in this market.

Wait what?
Farmville makes more money then any game other then maybe WoW or Call of Duty. For those game a majority is casual gamers anyway. 

Also, keep in mind development budget. An iphone game can be made by 1 person for little to no budget. Selling 2 million at $5 iS HUGE for that 1 person.

Having a huge budget on a hardcore game, that MIGHT sell 1 million, and after paying publishers, marketing etc, they'll be lucky to make $30 a copy split among hundreds of people.

Which is better?