1）据《纽约时报》报道，芬兰开发商Supercell日前宣布其免费iOS游戏每日销售额超过50万美元，每月收益超过1500万美元，扣除苹果30%抽成后就是1050万美元。

这些收益来自《Hay Day》以及《Clash of Clans》这两款游戏，这一数据表明位居iOS热销榜单之首的游戏目前每月收益已可突破500万美元。英国开发商NaturalMotion曾在8月份宣布免费赛车游戏《CSRRacing》每月销售额超过1200万美元。

Clash of Clans(from AppData)

Hay Day ranking(from AppData)

据AppData数据显示，《Clash of Clans》目前位居iPhone及iPad热销应用榜单第二名，《Hay Day》位居iPhone热销应用榜单第19名，在iPad榜单位居第14名。

2）据pocketgamer报道，King.com高管Tommy Palm在日前的GDC Online 2012大会上发言表示，King.com游戏每天会生成25亿个数据点，共有8名全职人员负责分析数据。

bubble-witch-saga(from theverge.com)

《Bubble Witch Saga》在移动平台每用户收益约为在Facebook平台的3倍，iPad用户在iOS平台盈利性最高。从iOS平台情况来看，有65%的玩家来自iPhone平台，25%来自iPad，10%来自iPod Touch。iPad所创收益占比为42%，iPhone占比54%。

3）据gamezebo报道，手机游戏公司Com2uS最近与Hello Kitty母公司三丽鸥合作，将Hello Kitty元素植入农场游戏《Tiny Farm》。

Hello Kitty-Tiny Farm(from gamezebo)

Com2uS公司表示，《Tiny Farm》核心玩家与Hello Kitty粉丝较为匹配，基本上是年轻女性用户，这项合作有助于提升这类用户在游戏中的参与度。

4）据gamasutra报道，手机游戏开发商Machine Zone首席执行官Gabe Leydon在最近采访中表示，他认为免费增值游戏所面临下一个挑战就是创建一个可靠的游戏社区，提升社区粘性可以增加用户盈利性，但吸引更多玩家进行互动，并围绕游戏创造持续的兴奋感则是一项漫长而艰巨的挑战。

他称尽管当前网络技术在游戏之外的各个领域已经十分发达，华尔街已可用皮秒进行股票交易，但游戏行业仍存在16人模式的游戏，比起现代网络技术，电子游戏行业实际上已经十分落后。现在人们已经有大量可用的图像引擎、物理引擎，但却还没有出现所谓的社区引擎。

Google-play(from aleng.net)

5）据venturebeat报道，谷歌日前宣布支持开发者向Google Play推出订阅应用的免费试用服务，开发者可自行设定免费试用期限。用户若要参与免费试用，就必须完成常规的付费交易流程，但试用期结束后系统才会开始收费。不过用户在试用期间可随时取消订阅服务。（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）Supercell’s free-to-play titles grossing $15M a month on iOS

Kathleen De Vere

Finnish developer Supercell has told the New York Times its free-to-play iOS games are seeing sales in excess of $500,000 a day. On a monthly basis that translates to more than $15 million in gross revenue, or $10.5 million after Apple takes its 30 percent transaction fee.

The figure, which includes revenues from both Hay Day and Clash of the Clans, is yet another indication that a top grossing iOS game is now easily earning in excess of $5 million a month.

In August the U.K.’s NaturalMotion revealed its popular free-to-play drag racing title CSR Racing was seeing sales of more than $12 million a month, a figure that still stands as the high-water mark for a single iOS game.

According to AppData, Clash of the Clans is currently the No. 2 top grossing iPhone and iPad app. Hay Day is the No. 19 top grossing iPhone app and the No. 14 iPad app.（source：insidemobileapps）

2）GDC Online 12: iOS players are three times more valuable than Facebook, reckons King.com

by Jon Jordan

Three platforms are shaping the future of gaming, according to King.com’s Tommy Palm.

At GDC Online 2012, he gave a talk entitled ‘Building a multiplatform game business from Facebook to Mobile’.

Of course, given King.com’s current business, those platforms are Facebook, smartphones and tablets.

“Players want their games to be seamless, snackable and social across these different platforms,” Palm explained. “Casual games such as Bubble Witch Saga are ideal.”

Act quick and smart

Yet making games in this competitive environment is difficult.

Companies can reduce risk by spending a lot on high production games, quickly copying successful games, or as King.com does, experiment by releasing a lot of low cost, quickly made game and seeing which ones find an audience.

Before getting into Facebook and mobile, King.com’s main business was its web-based Flash portal, which is an ideal environment for such quick experimentation.

However, data is also crucial for working out exactly which games are winners and worth investing in.

“King.com generates 2.5 billion data points daily and has 8 people working on data analysis full-time,” Palm revealed.

Data itself is meaningless unless it’s made understandable in some way. That’s where indicators such as daily active users, average revenue and retention come into play, particularly when you’re looking to compare players from different platforms.

For example, in terms of Bubble Witch Saga, King.com generates around three times the revenue per player on mobile compared to Facebook, with iPad players monetising best on iOS.

In terms of the iOS universal build, players are spread 65 percent on iPhone, 25 percent on iPad, and 10 percent on iPod touch. However, iPad generates 42 percent of overall revenue, with iPhone at 54 percent.

Foundations for growth

Of course, for King.com’s Facebook and mobile strategy, that’s all about the free-to-play business model.

This means it can address the largest audience in the most flexible manner – differentiating customers in terms of IAP, ads and viral marketing.

An example of this is Bubble Witch Saga’s life system, which gives you five lives per day. If you run out, you can buy more, ask your friends for lives or watch a video advert. King.com also mixes up such consumables (which are cheap) with permanent power ups (more expensive).

The final area that Palm stressed was the value of branding and marketing.

This isn’t just about getting featured by Apple, but taking a broad approach; everything from PR to using social channels, spending on advertising and cross promotions with people playing your existing games.

Significantly, Palm suggested that such was the speed of interaction required to address this market that the traditional publisher-developer relationship can’t react fast enough to be successful.（source：pocketgamer）

3）Hello Kitty visits Tiny Farm and makes it about 20% more fluffy

By Nadia Oxford

Cats are the anti-farmer. Farming is about staying in one place and cultivating the land, and cats are all about wandering to new territories and slaying exotic new species of birds. But perhaps there is one feline that is well-suited for the act of farming: Hello Kitty. She’s sweet, she’s friendly, she lacks claws—and she also lacks a mouth, so there’s no way she’d be able to eat her prey. Either way, Hello Kitty has arrived on Com2uS’s Tiny Farm.

Hello Kitty’s parent company, Sanrio, has partnered with Com2uS to bring Japan’s most adorable cat to the popular farming sim. Now collectors of Hello Kitty memorabilia can go nuts gathering up tons of virtual items and accessories based on the property.

If collecting kitty merchandise isn’t your bag (what’s wrong with you?), Hello Kitty’s presence in Tiny Farm brings the opportunity to explore Kitty’s farm and engage in Sanrio-themed quests.

“With Sanrio’s world-wide appeal that spanning generations and continents, Com2uS is expecting an unprecedented response to this thrilling event,” Com2uS stated in a press release. “Tiny Farm’s core players match much of the core Sanrio demographic of young, hip females, so Com2uS couldn’t be more excited about this partnership.”（source：gamezebo）

4）Building better communities: The next challenge for free-to-play Exclusive

By Kris Graft

The free-to-play business model has seen a lot of success, but game developers still have their work cut out for them to bring free-to-play into the next generation.

Gabe Leydon, CEO of iMob and Jet Fighters mobile developer Machine Zone, told Gamasutra at GDC Online about the next step for free-to-play.

“Most of the advancements right now [in free-to-play], I would say, are in community,” Leydon said. “Games have been largely about collision for the past 30 or so years — collision-based games where you have to dodge something to survive, or pass the finish line before somebody else.

“Now they’re getting a little more emotional, more psychological,” he added. “The games are more conduits to interact with each other, rather than to tell them a story. They let the users tell each other the story. What you’re going to see is major advancements on the community side.”

Improving community engagement also means more opportunity to monetize players. But getting more people to interact with one another, and creating lasting excitement around a game, will be a long, difficult task.

“Community has a long way to catch up to graphics. Online technology is a lot more advanced in everywhere but video games,” Leydon said. “Wall Street is trading in picoseconds, and we still have 16-player games. This is really small. This is not even modern online technology at all. It’s basically 10 years behind. So, the video game industry overall is really, really behind when it comes to modern web technologies.”

“If I wanted to license a graphics engine, I can. If I want to license a physics engine, I can. If I want to license a physics engine, I can. If I want to license a community engine, they don’t exist. All the largest video games in the world right now are online, community-based games. And those are going to advance in a way that people don’t quite see yet.”（source：gamasutra）

5）Android developers can now offer fun, free little app samples

Rebecca Grant

As of today, Google is allowing developers to build free trial periods into their subscription apps.

Developers can now determine the length of the trial period on the Developer Console, and you can try the Play apps before committing to a purchase. In order to participate in the free trial, you must complete a full transaction through the regular billing flow. You won’t be charged until the trial ends, at which point payment is automatically initiated. You  can cancel your subscriptions at any time.

Back in May, Google launched in-app subscriptions in the Play store that expanded monetization opportunities for mobile products. How to make money off apps is a persistent question within the technology community, perhaps people will actually begin to open their wallets after getting to try it for free.（source：venturebeat）