I just saw a new report from AppAnnie. Together, iOS and Android sales exceeded all Handheld game sales for Q4 of last year. But, far as I can tell, iOS sales seemed to be roughly 3x that of Android. Further, 60% of the Android sales were in Asia.
The last time I considered Android, there was a lot of debate. “Android users never buy anything!” … “But, there are more devices!” … “But, supporting Android is hard!” … So, we waited. And, now that our products are doing well, we wanted to give it another look. But, Android Pro is gonna slap me for $1500, plus the Android plugins, plus new hardware. I am asking myself… is it worth it?
A couple of things to note. Android market is still growing at a faster clip than IOS. All the numbers they are presenting exclude ad revenue. Because android has a lower conversion rate of download to purchase companies have pushed their revenue streams towards ads on android. This could be a case of the tail wagging the dog.
When you compare platform to platform android is the equivalent of releasing on a Nintendo platform, without the same technical burden. The short answer is that games that do well on IOS will also do well on Android.
To answer your question of “is Android worth it?” It is worth it only if IOS is “worth it”. Meaning they’ll either both be worth it or neither will be. Fortunately with Unity you can push to one platform, determine the market value, and then purchase the alternate platform once you’ve established the metrics are in your favor.
In my experience, the problem is more complex than “Android users never buy anything!”. It’s a combination of different things:
Normal stats show Android with a huge penetration advantage over iOS, but that’s worldwide. This means a lot of people in China, India, Japan and Korea - which are not normally part of a western developer target audience. If you look at the US numbers, the distribution is more even. So don’t get fooled by the large number of Android devices out there - many of those are out of your reach.
While even the local numbers may look good for Android, a lot of those are for low end devices, or devices with old Android versions (there are some REALLY low end devices out there that people normally get for free or super cheap from their phone provider). In practice, this means people who don’t use the phone very often. What I’ve seen again and again on applications I have access to is that even though we have, say, an install base split between versions Android 2.3 and 4+, people with Android 4+ use the application a lot more than people with an older version of the system. This makes sense: people want faster phones, and in comparison, the vast majority of iOS users are on new phones or new OS versions too. You don’t see much 3GS traffic.
Both items have an impact even on installation of free apps or games. I’d say right now, in the US, the ratios I have seen are 2:1 in terms of user install base (that is, we normally have half the number of Android users than the number of iOS users). That’s what I’d expect in terms of audience of a game or app.
So when deciding on whether to release a game on Android, you can’t look at the raw user numbers. I’m pretty confident you have to look at the number of users under Android 4+ against the number of people on iOS, and then decide. It’ll probably be close to the 2:1 ratio, with some variation depending on your audience.
Yes, there’s probably a problem with purchases too - but I do believe those exist not because Android 4+ users are cheap, but because the offerings are worse than on iOS, so there’s not a very big culture of buying quality stuff. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe this is slowly changing (for the better).
Personally, I’d say it’s always worth releasing something on Android, even if it’s a smaller segment. Its size is increasing, and as users of old Android phones upgrade - the 2.3 version created a chasm which it is only now starting to out of - they’ll probably join the fray of users that actively use their phones for games, apps, and purchases of games and apps. And with a cross-development platform like Unity, porting is a no-brainer as long as you considered different resolutions and densities (which is now a reality even on iOS development).
If anything, investing on it now will count as an important data point. The purchase of the Unity extension is a one-time thing.
Just wanted to drop this here:
From some of Eric’s posts, I came to the conclusions that you can purchase android basic even when you own unity pro.
Which is less of an entry fee to just try the android market and if you decide that it’s worth it you can always upgrade the basic license to pro.
(with the price of basic already factored in the upgrade price)
You could also get some kind of “lotto” type thing happen, for example take a look at this game kids ABC letters sold over 50k units on google at $3.99 a pop and is ranking #3 in education, but if you look at IOS it hardly did anything not ranked at all.
Well they have a whole suite of kids games, so its possible that because they ported all there games at once rather than doing it willy nilly it had a more pronounced effect.
@Gigiwoo2: Take the risk only if you are making enough money from your iOS games. If your iOS games can’t cover your expenses, then don’t risk it until it does.
You will be able to write off losses from your taxes at the end of the year, but to do this you must first make money. You don’t get money from the government for going on a negative balance at the end of the year. So: go for it if you are netting already higher than that. The license may be useful in the future to develop for Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet (where your biggest revenue will likely come from in the Android world.)
I suggest you actually check the ranking. The iOS version of that game has peaked at #266 in Education in the App Store. Given the huge volume moving in iOS, I would not be shocked if it sold more there than it sold in Android.
Also, as far as “installs” in Google Play: it means that. It is not measuring sales. If I download a game and install it on 10 devices, it will be at “about 10 installs”. It’s important to make that distinction. The easiest form of piracy in Google Play (and iOS) is account sharing, for one. Then there is any parent that may install this app on every family phone that may be near their kids at a given time (likely 2 in average for mom’s and dad’s.)
But finally: in the Android Store, the competition is fierce due to free garbage, but most this competitions is in the gaming world. There is not as much noise in educational or productivity areas. You want to make lots of money, come up with something in those categories. You want to make games… well…
Edit to add links and say: also, in google play, this dev has one of those “Top Developers” icons that tend to generate some level of trust.
For minibowling Android/iOS sales are split 35%/65% and that’s a paid app only on the google play store, Android sales aren’t as much as iOS ones but they’re not insignificant like Linux sales were on previous projects
I think one of the problems with android game sales is the lack of good games compared to iOS. Most people will release on iOS first and then maybe release on android afterwards. I think it was IGF last year (could be wrong) when Andy Schatz commented that none of the finalists for the best mobile game category worked on android.
As simple as this. Releasing on android is going to bring in more money and as long as your iOS sales cover your costs your android sales will be a much welcome increase. Even if it doesn’t sell as well as iOS.
No, I don’t think its worth it at all to port it to Android. The mentality of Android gamers are vastly different from iPhone gamers. The number don’t lie - Android is a platform for the pirates, technically inclined who would rather not pay than pay.
With Android phones market share now at THREE TIMES MORE than iPhone (54% vs 18%), and yet the Android apps are selling less than 1/3 of iPhone, that’s a pityful 1/9th of market potential than iPhone. People on Android are simply not willing to pay and I don’t see how that’s ever going to improve since Google is actively supporting the pirates by their lax attitude and lack of security on their platform.
That’s a sweeping generalisation. I just bought a game on my android phone last night, so how can that be if your universal statement says I’m not willing to pay? There is a whole range of factors that make an apple on apple comparison extremely hard. For example some paid games on iOS are free on android (with ad or in app revenue), there is more games on iOS, android market includes cheap phones and devices, android is more popular than iOS in countries where people have less money for games, from what I can tell f2p models are more popular on android.
Regardless of that 1/3 of iOS sales is still nothing to scold at. Remember when people said Mac and Linux weren’t worth supporting? Just look at how wrong they were, well from an indie stand point it could be different for AAA.
I think its only just worth doing if it doesnt cost you anything. I have had my game on IOS for just over a year now and it has done ok for a first game. About a month ago I used my free android licence and released it on android. It was a paid version. After 2 weeks I didnt get a single download or sale, so released it as a free version with Admob in it.
Well I must say it seems like a waste of time. 2 weeks later I am at about 10,000 installs but as the advert requests increase the ecpm drops. What started as 7 dollars ecpm is now 40 cents. So Im making about 50 dollars per week. If I had paid for the licence plus the cost of my time it wouldnt be worth it.
