Freemium is dead. Long live - who?
With the death of paid apps in 2013, everyone is looking toward freemium, but whispers and murmurs about saturation on the mobile market are already heard.
As competition gets bigger, releases more frequent, the freemium model faces the problem of gathering enough players. This can be seen with the cost per install (CPI) going up a staggering 41% in 2013, while average revenue per user has been more or less flat since early 2013.
We believe a look into the business model would be in place! Several game formats have a hard time even implementing the freemium model, that often practice deprivation tactics (wait for lives or pay).
The monetization model forces you with a negative game experience to make you pay. This is not satisfactory for either player or developer. You want people to play your game as much as possible. Freemium games where you challenge other players, are often subject to an even worse model, just pure ad-based revenue (of course with feeble attempts to sell stuff as well).
An increasing amount of games face the problem that they cannot have a positive ROI on their advertising; making them unable to build a large enough playerbase to break even with their freemium game. With 0.15% of users accounting for 50% of freemium games revenue, and often only 2% of the gamers paying in a freemium game, you need a lot of users.
So your game cannot get a million installs - what's the counteraction to this reality? At CasualKit we believe our ready-to-go devkit can help games beat the average revenue per user of the freemium model. Have a look at our site casualkit.com and see what we believe is the next thing in the game monetization development.
reference: business insider
reference: gameindustry international
