A look back at the state of the App Store market in 2015. What were the biggest games of the year? Who were the big publishers? In particular, which games are doing well which you might have not noticed. This talk was at Pocket Gamer Connects London on January 18th 2016.

1. Hidden Winners 2015
By Ric Moore
ric@thesecretpolice.org
@_RicMoore

2. Ric Moore
• Co-founder The Secret Police, mobile
f2p studio London
• Built market intel site Crispy Byte
• Co-founder, CTO, Bossa Studios

3. …and now some insights to the App Store

4. What were the biggest games of 2015?

5. Apple Charts
Top Grossing & Top Free

6. Apple Top Free Charts
What is ‘Free’?
• ~80% downloads
• ~20% ratings
• Time period: 1 day? 3 days?

7. Apple Top Free Charts - All 2015
• Store Top 200 Chart feed every 3 hours
• Runs 24/7
• 2,920 Charts per year
• Determine average rank for every game
that has charted

8. Top Grossing 2015 – Games – iPhone - USA

9. Top Grossing Jan 2015 Top Grossing December 2015

10. 21
10
18
4
22
20
3
9
20
3
20
22
3
24
2 1
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Action Adventure Arcade Board Card Casino Dice Family Puzzle Racing RPG Simulation Sports Strategy Trivia Word
Top Grossing iPhone USA – 2015 – Genre Split

11. Who are the biggest publishers of 2015?

12. 6
3
5
Publishers with the most games in
Top 100 Grossing – iPhone - USA

13. 41%
59%
Top 100 Grossing Games - iPhone - USA
Private Companies Public Companies

14. “Hidden Winners” – What are they?

15. “Hidden Winners”
• Games with a high grossing rank relative to
download rank

16. Grossing Rank
Avg. 50
Download Rank
Avg. 1100
Brave
Frontier

17. Grossing Rank
Avg. 30
Download Rank
Avg. 1100
Hit it Rich!
Free Casino Slots

18. Which games do this best?

19. Earning Power
• Score = Grossing rank – download rank
• Create a score for each day
• Sum scores over selected time period
• Chart games, order by score sums

20. Brave Frontier – An Example
Earning Power = Download Rank – Grossing Rank
Earning Power = 1180 – 34
Earning Power = 1146 (Saturday 9th January 2016)
Grossing Rank Download Rank

21. “Hidden Winners” 2015 – Games – iPhone - USA

22. “Hidden Winners”
• Top 20 dominated by 2 genres:
• Casino games
• Asian RPGs
• Implies high retention & monetisation
• Implies high ARPDAU
• Tend to be niche games
• Tend to be outside the Top 10

23. We’re Hiring!
Designers, Coders, Artists
ric@thesecretpolice.org
@_RicMoore
Thank You