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每日观察:关注《Tiny Village》Android版本盈利性(7.4)

发布时间:2012-07-04 11:02:43 Tags:,,

1)据insidemobileapps报道,TinyCo最近透露其免费增值游戏《Tiny Village》Android版本的ARPPU(每付费用户收益)比iOS版本多25%-40%。虽然该游戏两个版本用户最初ARPPU值相同,但从长远的游戏生命周期来看,Google Play和亚马逊Appstore用户在游戏中的投入会更多。

TinyCo android_infograph(from TinyCo)

TinyCo android_infograph(from TinyCo)

TinyCo还将其收益表现归功于游戏在Android平台的用户留存率,其Android版本用户7天用户留存率比iOS用户高7%。据其所称,游戏用户留存率越高,就越有可能创造高价值用户,因为玩家在游戏中逗留时间越长,就越可能付费购买IAP。

该公司表示,这种将Android平台视为“一等公民”的策略是公司ARPU及ARPPU超越其他Android开发商的关键。

2)据venturebeat报道,日前有匿名开发者声称苹果最近制裁非自然下载量行为的举措,导致他们的应用无故被列入苹果黑名单,而苹果方面对此并没有给予相应解释和回应。

app store apps(from news.cnblogs.com)

app store apps(from news.cnblogs.com)

观察者称之前曾有些开发者利用非法程序操纵应用下载量(在中国则以“水军”这种操纵手段最为典型,这种方法更难以识别),苹果已限制所有的非自然下载行为,但由于难以分辨人为操纵下载量及自然下载量,一些“清白”开发者也无端被App Store封杀。

让这些开发者气愤的是,苹果并非一视同仁地对待大小开发商,有知情者声称有些大型开发商也经常在App Store采用违反苹果条例的手段,但却甚少卷入苹果制裁风波中。

除此之外,有些开发商是在无意中雇用采取刷排名机制的营销公司,但苹果对此同样毫不手软。

不过也有些开发者认为,苹果此举虽然招致不少非议,并且可能危及一些合法运营的公司,但确实有利于净化App Store的竞争环境。

3)据insidemobileapps报道,EA在上周Google I/O大会上展示HTML5游戏《Strike Fortress》技术样本,指出HTML5已能够提供快速运行的游戏体验。该游戏支持Android与PC用户进行互动,采用Pterosaur图像引擎,其展示的全3D图像并没有明显的HTML5硬伤。

Strike Fortress(from insidemobileapps)

Strike Fortress(from insidemobileapps)

玩家可以在PC上使用控制器直接玩游戏,如果是Android用户则可通过扫瞄QR码直接通过浏览器进入游戏。不过EA目前暂不打算发布该游戏,仅将其作为公司的一个证明游戏理念可行性的实验性项目,但也不排除未来向大众用户推广游戏的可能性。

4)Gartner最近调查报告指出,平板电脑正逐渐成为人们阅读报纸、杂志和书籍的一个主流渠道。50%以上受访者表示,自己更喜欢在平板电脑上看书而不是阅读书本。虽然这种设备尚未完全取代纸质媒体,但确实在一定程度上影响了人们的阅读习惯(游戏邦注:Gartner调查于2011年末,样本是500多名英美及澳大利亚用户)。

tablet(from techcrunch)

tablet(from techcrunch)

调查发现,与PC用户一样, 电子邮件也是平板电脑用户最常使用的服务。81%受访者称自己在平板电脑上查看邮件,69%受访者在平板电脑上看新闻,查看天气者比例达63%,登录社交网络用户占比62%,玩游戏用户占比60%。

87%受访者在客厅使用平板电脑,65%在卧室使用平板电脑,47%在厨房使用平板电脑,在周末时使用平板电脑的频率较低(因为周末人们更经常外出)。

平板电脑比PC更具私人化特点,有45%受访者表示,自己“根本不与他人共用平板电脑”。

但从使用频率上看,用户平均每天使用手机达8次,而平板电脑平均每天仅2次(游戏邦注:用户每次使用时长可能并不相同)。

与平板电脑用户一样,多数用户是在卧室使用手机(占比78%),但仅有5%受访者自称曾在手机上看移动电视。

男女用户都更经常在家上网,但男性用户表示自己上网是为了搜集信息,女性上网则主要为了玩游戏和登录社交网站等娱乐活动。

5)据彭博社报道,近日有不同消息声称苹果计划推出“7至8英寸”,并且没有Retina屏幕的iPad,预计该设备将于今年10月面世。

7-Inch Apple iPad(from cybercrave.net)

7-Inch Apple iPad(from cybercrave.net)

观察者认为,苹果推出更小型平板电脑可能意在与谷歌Nexus 7、微软Surface角逐低端平板电脑市场。

6)NPD最新数据预测,平板电脑出货量将从目前有1.21亿部增长至2017年的4.16亿部,届时将超过笔记本电脑成为最受欢迎的移动PC设备。由于售价降低和功能增加,预计2017年所有移动PC出货量将从今天的3.47亿部增长至8.09亿部。

market tablet shipments(from NPD)

market tablet shipments(from NPD)

北美、西欧以及日本目前占据66%的平板电脑市场份额,预计未来5年这一比例仍将保持在60%左右。这三个市场的平板电脑出货量将从目前的8000万部增长至2017年的2.54亿部。

mobile PC shipment forecast(from NPD)

mobile PC shipment forecast(from NPD)

笔记本电脑市场仍将持续发展,但速度将低于平板电脑的28%,其出货量将从今天的2.08亿部增长至2017年的3.93亿部;笔记本电脑将占据49%的移动PC市场份额。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

1)TinyCo: Android retention and average revenue per paying user can be 25 to 40 percent higher than on iOS

Emanuel Maiberg

TinyCo’s free-to-play game Tiny Village can generate 25 to 40 percent higher average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) on Android than it does on iOS. While the game’s iOS and Android users produce equal ARPPU at first, TinyCo reports the further along in the game’s lifecycle a player gets, the more users in Google Play and the Amazon Appstore spend.

TinyCo also attributes its financial success partially to its retention rates on the platform — TinyCo’s Android users show seven percent higher day-seven retention rates than iOS users do. During last week’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google highlighted TinyCo’s retention strategy in a session called Monetizing Android Apps, explaining how the company targets players with special offers and incentives at the times they are most statistically likely to drop off. As TinyCo points out in its blog post, higher retention creates higher lifetime value users, since customers are more likely to pay for in-game products the longer they use an app.

In April, TinyCo reported that treating the Android platform as a “first-class citizen” had allowed the company to see much higher ARPU and ARPPU  than other Android developers. At the time the company credited its cross-platform Griffin game engine with cutting down on development costs and helping it address Android device fragmentation.

Given the developer’s success on the Android platform, it’s no surprise that Google highlighted TinyCo’s practices in two of their I/O sessions and encouraged other developers to follow TinyCo’s lead.(source:insidemobileapps

2)Apple’s bot farm ban blacklisting scores of legitimate businesses, say developers

by Keith Andrew

Apple’s attempt to crackdown on App Store manipulation techniques that violate its terms and conditions may have resulted in scores of law abiding outfits being blacklisted from the marketplace.

That’s according to a report on VentureBeat, which cites a number of anonymous developers who claim they have been unwillingly caught up in Apple’s attempts to block businesses utilising bot farms.

Bot bother

The technique, which hit the headlines back in February, involves scores of bots downloading a specific app several times until it reaches the higher echelons of the App Store’s rankings.

Though the downloads themselves are entirely artificial, the visibility afforded by the high chart placing can, in theory, lead to a rise in legitimate downloads.

In China, a similar technique involves whole ‘water armies’ of people downloading apps for similar gain – a practice that’s harder to spot, given humans rather than bots are the weapons of choice.

All such techniques were quickly outlawed by Apple, but the difficulty of splitting farmed downloads from genuine ones has resulted in innocent developers being banned from the App Store for life, with no reason given for their dismissal and no right of reply afforded.

Big problems

“We had an app rejected and we didn’t know why,” said an anonymous ‘seasoned’ developer.

“It would be much better if we had clear communication from Apple about what the guidelines really are. It seems like everyone is worried about this, but the information isn’t evenly circulated. People think that Apple plays favourites.”

What angers said developers, it’s claimed, it that small, independent outfits aren’t being treated in the same manner as the App Store’s big hitters.

Indeed, one source “familiar with the cheaters” suggests some of the supposed “big guys” regularly manipulate the App Store using techniques that contravene Apple’s guidelines, but these businesses are rarely called out for engaging in such practices.

No excuses

For those that are caught, however, Apple’s response is said to be swift, with the company holding little sympathy for developers who have unknowingly employed marketing agencies built around bot farms.

“A friend of mine had a pretty successful mobile app development company with hundreds of titles in the App Store,” added Nexon America president Daniel Kim.

“He just got cut off one day because he used the wrong marketing company. Without his knowledge, this company had used bots to bring some of their titles up on the rankings.

“They were completely cut off. They were running like 24 million [downloads] a year, and there is no appeal process. It’s pretty absolute.”

Turning to the dark side

Even formally ‘clean’ developers are being forced into utilising bot farms to keep up with the competition, it’s suggested.

Such is the competitive nature of the App Store, that manipulating the platform is now less a technique used to get ahead, and more one that simply helps maintain the status quo.

Nevertheless, while Apple’s methods are drawing criticism and risk threatening legitimate businesses the world over, few argue that the firm is in the wrong for wanting to take action against supposed App Store cheaters.

“A lot of these content farms are poisoning relevancy,” concluded PlayHaven chief executive Andy Yang

“Some developers will try to get away with it. Others won’t take the chance. It is universally good news if Apple cracks down on them and the marketing dollars don’t go into bot farms.”(source:pocketgamer

3)EA’s Strike Fortress proves HTML5 can deliver a social cross-platform action game

Mike Thompson

Electronic Arts proved that HTML5 can deliver a quality fast-paced title at Google’s I/O conference last week with Strike Fortress , a game that provides a social action experience between Android and PC users.

Strike Fortress  is a playable tech demo, showcasing what HTML5 can deliver. Using the Pterosaur graphics engine, which is JavaScript-based, the game delivers full 3D graphics that showed none of the telltale problems with animation that HTML5 is notorious for. The gameplay delivers a player-versus-player experience, similar to the action/real-time-strategy play of League of Legends. Players control a battle mech as it stomps around a game arena, trying to take out opposing players’ bases with the aid of AI-controlled tanks that automatically spawn and progress across the map.

There were two ways to play the game at Google I/O.  Players on PC could use console controllers to directly control the battle mechs roaming around the map. Meanwhile, users with Android devices were able to scan a QR code that would bring them directly to the game in their browsers. When using a mobile device, players were presented with a top-down map of the arena they could drop support crates, mines and missiles around. Mobile players acted as free agents and could help or hinder whoever they wanted, with the results of their actions being played on a wall-mounted television. We only saw two mobile users playing in a game, but Driscoll tells us there were as many as ten Android users playing at a time.

The game was worked on by a group of Carnegie Mellon students and the team from EA’s Chief Creative Office, based on an idea EA had for an Xbox title. According to designer Daniel Driscoll, the task was particularly daunting for the students since none of them had programmed in JavaScript before. Driscoll tells us part of the reason HTML5 isn’t successful yet in the game industry is because it’s part of the JavaScript environment. Driscoll says there is a dearth of game developers who also have JavaScript experience, primarily because it’s “a language less efficient than what people want.”

EA doesn’t have any plans to release Strike Fortress, instead, the game was created as a project for the company’s Chief Creative Office to prove that a game like this could be done.

Driscoll doesn’t rule out the possibility of the game getting a wider release in the future, but for now it’s serving as an example of how far game developers can go with Java WebGL.(source:insidemobileapps

4)Read About It: Gartner Survey Finds Tablets Are Leading To A ‘Less Paper’ But Not ‘Paperless’ Publishing World

Ingrid Lunden

A report out earlier today from NPD highlighted how tablets are taking over from notebooks as the mobile PC of choice. By coincidence, a survey has been published by Gartner today that sheds some light on the “how” behind that shift: more people are using tablets for the functions that used to be the preserve of PCs, such as checking email, social networking and checking the weather.

The survey also found that tablets are becoming a mainstay for people who read newspapers, magazines and books. More than 50 percent of respondents said they preferred to read on tablets instead of on paper. It’s not clear if ‘tablets’ in this case includes devices like the Kindle as well, but what’s clear so far is that a portable touchscreen is not replacing the physical versions of those completely, yet: it’s about “less paper” rather than “paperless”, Gartner says.

Gartner’s findings are from the end of 2011 and covering just over 500 consumers in the UK, U.S. and Australia, was run as a diary where people recorded what they did on their three most-used devices: those, it seems, were predetermined as tablets, mobile devices and PCs. The research does not look at the actual devices, to see whether the iPad, for example, is seeing more usage than an Android tablet.

Gartner found that just as it is with PCs, email was the most popular activity with respondents: 81 percent said they checked email on tablets. After that, newsreading was the second-most popular activity at 69 percent; checking weather was the third-most popular at 63 percent; social networking was at 62 percent; and gaming in third at 60 percent.

And what’s interesting is that while we’ve heard a lot from magazine, newspaper and book publishers about how the rise of tablets has changed their business models around, the Gartner survey gives us the other side of the deal: it shows that consumers are really using their tablets as a replacement for all three, with a majority of respondents, 51 percent, saying they preferred to get their periodical hit from their tablets more than the paper versions.

Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, notes that tablets scored much higher as a printed matter replacement than phones or PCs.

“The rapid adoption of media tablets is substantively changing how consumers access, create and share content,” she writes. “On average, one in three respondents used their media tablets to read a book, compared with 13 percent for mobile PCs, and 7 percent for mobile phones.”

In fact, at home tablets seem to stand in a class of their own for consumers, in that they are used alongside whatever else a consumer is using; meanwhile, that “whatever else” is often shifting, from TV to PC to mobile device depending on what users are doing. Tablets, Gartner notes, are used most in the living room (87 percent), the bedroom (65 percent) and kitchen (47 percent), and less on the weekends than on weekdays, when we tend to be out of the house more.

And just as the NPD analysts pointed out that notebook PCs are being more tablet-like, here we get some confirmation from the consumer side that we clearly have a taste for the tablet form factor at the moment: they are small and lightweight, and that’s convenient. And while PCs are often shared commodities in a household, perhaps because of their size or price, or for the fact that they are not exactly designed to be shared, tablets occupy a personalized position more akin to the mobile handset: some 45 percent of respondents said they “do not share their tablet at all”.

Gartner also provided some survey feedback on how other devices are used. It noted that if tablets are dominant at home, mobile phones are the most dominant when considering day-long use.

They are used eight times per day on average, the survey found. As a point of comparison, tablets are only used twice per day on average, and mobile PCs are used three times per day (although the hours spent in those times will, of course, vary). In terms of what they’re used for, it’s a spread similar to tablets, except that music is added in as a top-five activity (weather drops out).

Like tablets, mobiles are used most of all in the living room (78 percent). Gartner’s conclusion: TVs are fighting for users’ attention, which is also being captured by these portable devices. Mobile TV remains a very niche activity: only five percent of users said they watched mobile TV on their phones. On-demand content scored somewhat higher at 15 percent.

A bit on gender differences, too: while both use Internet at home more than outside the home, men say they use their devices for gathering information, while women say they use them for entertainment like gaming and socialising on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report “Survey Analysis: Early Tablet Adopters and Their Daily Use of Connected Devices.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at.(source:techcrunch

5)Report: Smaller iPad coming later this year

By Erica Ogg

It’s been rumored for years. Is Apple finally set to sell a smaller iPad? That’s what Bloomberg says it has heard from two different sources.

Apple is planning to introduce an iPad with a screen measuring “7 inches to 8 inches diagonally, less than the current 9.7-inch version,” says the report published Tuesday. However, this iPad won’t have a Retina display, according to one of the sources.

It could be introduced by the end of the year, possibly in October.

It’s true that many in the tech world have been clamoring for a smaller iPad for years — my colleague Kevin Tofel, for instance. But it’s not necessarily clear how much profit Apple could squeeze from a device that would basically be hobbled with fewer features than its best-selling 9.7-inch tablet. Apple’s put a lot of money and energy into positioning the iPad’s huge, bright and crisp screen as essential for a tablet. Why go smaller and duller? Competition.

The iPad has sold remarkably well as is. It is the only tablet of consequence on the market, two years after the debut of the original. And the introduction of its super high-definition Retina display from the iPhone to the iPad (and recently the MacBook Pro) is starting to convince people that a high-def display is a must have in all gadgets. A chief benefit of going smaller and with a non-Retina display would be to get the price down to a competitive level for that size device, somewhere around $200.(source:gigaom

6)NPD: Tablets To Overtake Notebooks By 2016 As The Most Popular Mobile ‘PC’

Ingrid Lunden

Tablets, and specifically the iPad from Apple, have been one of the big drivers for growth in mobile in the last couple of years, but figures out today from NPD indicate that their popularity is going to get even bigger: the market for tablets, its researchers predict, is set to boom from 121 million shipped tablets today to 416 million devices by 2017, when they will overtake notebooks to become the most popular mobile PC device, driven by a drop in costs and a rise in features. Overall mobile PC shipments will reach 809 million units by 2017, from 347 million today.

But over that time, the rise of tablets will remain largely a story about developed/mature markets. Regions like North America and Western Europe, along with single countries like Japan, currently account for 66 percent of all tablet shipments (and most likely sales), and that proportion, NPD predicts, will remain in the 60 percent range for the next five years. That works out to 254 million units by 2017, versus 80 million today.

NPD seems to say that this is partly due to a lack of infrastructure and available services in developing markets, but also that it is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: vendors continue to focus on the mature markets with their new products, so that’s where they get bought: ”New entrants are tending to launch their initial products in mature markets,” Richard Shim, senior analyst at NPD DisplaySearch, notes in a statement.

The rise of tablets is also a story about the decline of notebooks. The market for these will continue to expand, but at a rate lower than the 28 percent that tablets will see: NPD says that by 2017 there will be 393 million notebooks shipped compared to 208 million today.

One takeaway from this: although Apple with its iPad line of tablets has dominated the tablet world in market and mindshare up to now, the space is far from penetrated, and that means that companies like Microsoft, Google and others still have a lot to play for.

Another is that we may continue to see a pressure on price, but that won’t necessarily mean a shortcut on features. Amazon has, by some estimates, ushered in the “death of the spec” with its Kindle Fire tablet, which pares down expensive features like cameras in favor of delivering a sub-$200 device, but NPD notes that it will be the features on those tablets — instant-on capability, battery life, portability, as well as multi-core processors, hi-res displays — that will make them a “compelling alternative” to notebooks for the mobile consumer.

Part of the reason we will see a lot of features continue to be incorporated into tablets is because of the emphasis of content on the devices. App stores are increasingly catering to tablet users. And figures from NPD itself indicate how they are becoming a major platform for traditional TV consumption. This kind of usage screams for better screens, faster processors and just generally awesome hardware.

But by the way, this is not to say notebooks are dying. Far from it — they will still account for 49 percent of the mobile PC market, NPD says, shipping 393 million units in 2017 compared to 208 million in 2012. It adds that notebook makers are also taking heed and looking to put more tablet-like features into their products — for example, becoming thinner and incorporating touch functionality.(source:techcrunch


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