1）SuperData最新数据显示，在截止3月份的过去一年中，拥有最高ARPU（每用户平均收益）的手机游戏表现情况。Android和iOS热作《Puzzle & Dragons》以11.89美元的ARPU值轻松夺魁。这一数值甚至超过了其他9款游戏的总和。

整个数字游戏市场总体收益在3月至4月下降了7%，手机游戏下降了6%。这是该市场连续第4个月出现下滑。SuperData认为市场出现了过多的免费游戏是主要问题之一。不过付费游戏仍然具有生存空间，例如《Leo’s Fortune》这款5美元手机游戏就在20多个市场中居于付费应用榜单之首。

Puzzle & Dragons(from play.google.com)

2）社交游戏平台PlayPhone最新调查结果显示，仅有37%美国受访者表示自己愿意支付至少5美元费来以获得“完整的游戏体验”，57%的拉美裔受访者有此付费意愿。表性愿意支付这一费用的男性比例为54%，女性为46%。（游戏邦注：其调查样本为1000名美国人智能手机和平板电脑游戏玩家）。

mobile gamers(from de.hama.com)

25-29岁年龄段用户是付费意愿最高的群体，有49%表示自己每月至少付费5美元。而那些自诩为“手机游戏玩家”者的这一比例则高达53%。

除此之外，PlayPhone还发现68%受访者“频繁或经常”牺牲非工作日的睡眠时间，熬夜玩手机游戏。还有58%受访者称自己在工作日的晚上也有这种行为。49%受访者承认自己在上班时间玩手机游戏。

有17%受访者承认“频繁或经常”在开车时玩手机游戏，在那些每天至少玩3个小时游戏的受访者中，有这种开车玩游戏习惯的受访者比例甚至高达28%。

3）据Raptr社交网络调查结果显示，4月份该平台玩家投入时间最多的游戏仍是《英雄联盟》，其多人在线战役占据Raptr成员所入PC游戏的14.5%；排名第二的则是《魔兽世界》，第三名是《暗黑破坏神III》。

平均来看，《Elder Scrolls Online》玩家本月在游戏中投入时间平均为45小时，魔兽玩家则平均投入35小时。

The-Elder-scrolls-Online(from digitaltrends)

4）NPD Group最新报告指出，3400万硬核玩家平均每周在电子游戏上投入时间达22小时（游戏邦注：NPD Group将硬核玩家定义为每周至少在Xbox One、PS 4、Xbox 360、PS 3、PC或Mac平台玩5小时游戏的用户）。

报告还指出，三分之二硬核玩家会在自己的移动设备上玩游戏。74%受访者还表示如果价格相同，他们宁愿选择实体盒装媒体而非数字游戏，但这一比例已经比去年下降5个百分点。数字游戏支持率仍在不断增长。

值得注意的是，硬核玩家对游戏内容的需求量以及付费愿意仍然比较高。

5）据venturebeat报道，韩国聊天应用KakaoTalk日前宣布其全球下载量已达5亿，这意味着其用户已通过该应用中的链接进入iOS App Store或Google Play，下载超过5亿次的软件应用。

kakaotalk(from technode.com)

Kakao及其合作工作室还在该聊天应用中推出游戏，玩家安装游戏时，Kakao就能从中获得一定抽成。这令该公司在过去2年中因游戏业务而创收超过10亿美元。

KakaoTalk目前月活跃用户超过1.45亿，拥有超过230家合作伙伴，通过该服务推广了450款游戏。该公司透露其推广的每款游戏都曾进入Google Play平台下载量榜单前10名。（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）Puzzle and Dragons makes more per player than the next 9 mobile games combined

Mike Minotti

Mobile gamers are spending less, but at least they still have some love for dragons.

Research firm SuperData revealed the mobile games with the best average revenue per user (ARPU) during a 12-month period that ended in March. Android and iOS hit Puzzle & Dragons easily tops the chart with $11.89 per player. That’s more than the other nine games combined. You can see the full list below:

The overall digital games market went down 7 percent from March to April. Specifically, mobile games slipped 6 percent. That’s fourth months of drops in a row. SuperData expects developers will try to fix the problem by moving away from the free-to-play model.

“It is true that most mobile games operate with a free-to-play mechanic,” SuperData states in its report. “But we anticipate a counter-trend toward premium mobile games. Already we’re observing some notable successes.” One example is Leo’s Fortune, a $5 mobile game that was the No. 1 paid app in over 20 markets.

SuperData contributed the success of Puzzle & Dragons to its multiplayer component, although you always need a little luck to have a breakaway hit on the crowded mobile market.（source：venturebeat）

2）20 percent of mobile gamers would skip sex for Candy Crush

By Matthew Diener

Almost a quarter of Americans would rather give up sex than give up mobile games, while others like to take on titles while they’re driving.

That’s according to the second part of social gaming platform PlayPhone’s Mobile Gaming Chronicles – a survey aimed at uncovering the key trends in the spending habits and behaviours of mobile gamers.

Drawing on a pool of 1,000 Americans who game on smartphones and tablets, Part II of the Mobile Gaming Chronicles began with a look at what groups would be most inclined to pay a montly subscription fee of $5 or more for a “complete gaming experience”.

While only 37 percent of all American respondents said they would pay this fee, a full 57 percent of Latinos said they’d pay. Meanwhile, gender didn’t make much difference, as 54 percent of men said they’d pay compared to 46 percent of women.

Breaking it down

25-to-29-year-olds were also the most likely age group to spend, with 49 percent saying they’d pay $5 or more for a monthly subscription. Those who self-identified as “mobile gamers”, however, were 53 percent like to spend.

Going past willingness to spend, PlayPhone found that 68 percent of respondents “frequently or occasionally” sacrificed sleep on a non-work night to finish playing a mobile game.

Alarmingly, 17 percent of respondents admitted to playing mobile games while driving.

Conversely, 58 percent admitted to the same on work nights.

But just being in the office isn’t enough to curtail gaming habits. Almost half of all respondents – 49 percent – admitted to playing mobile games at work, while 22 percent formally blocked out times on their calendars to play mobile games.

At what price, entertainment?

Digging a bit deeper, PlayPhone’s survey found that – alarmingly – 17 percent of respondents admitted to “frequently or occasionally” playing mobile games while driving.

Among those who play for three or more hours a day, this unsafe practice jumped up to 28 percent. And it turns out that mobile gamers are serious about their priorities – a full 20 percent of respondents said they would rather give up sex than mobile games for a week.

To provide some context on these behaviours, Anders Evju -CMO of PlayPhone – took a philosophical approach.

“Just as we seek to reveal emerging trends in mobile gaming monetization, we feel it’s essential to investigate behaviors that define heavy spenders.” Evju began

“It furthers our goals of maximizing value for our game developer and operator partners and enables us to continue to deliver an optimal social gaming experience.”（source：pocketgamer）

3）Raptr: PC gamers are playing way more Counter-Strike, Battlefield 4, and Team Fortress 2 than Titanfall

Jeffrey Grubb

It looks like developer Respawn timed the release of Titanfall’s first expansion just right, because PC gamers are starting to abandon it.

The sci-fi shooter fell out of top-20 most-played PC games in April, according to the Raptr social network for gamers. That site tracks the play time and habits of its members, and it found that the biggest chunk of them are still spending their time with League of Legends. That multiplayer online battle-arena hit accounted for 14.5 percent of the time Raptr members spent playing PC games. Other games at the top of the list include World of Warcraft at No. 2 and Diablo III at No. 3.

But it wasn’t all the old standards at the top.

“The Elder Scrolls Online made a thunderous entrance into April’s most-played list after its April 4 launch,” reads a Raptr blog post. “On average, Elder Scrolls Online players spent 45 in-game hours this month, compared to an average of 35 for World of Warcraft players.”

Raptr tracks the activity of “tens of millions” of PC gamers (although it won’t specify exactly how many), which makes it one of the most-accurate resources for seeing what people are playing. Unlike the Steam service, Raptr can also track time spent in Blizzard titles and other major games not sold through Valve’s digital-distribution service.

As for Titanfall, the game didn’t just drop out of the top 20 — it plummeted all the way down to No. 29 overall. That doesn’t compare favorably to other first-person shooters. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was No. 6, Battlefield 4 was No. 7, Warframe was No. 9, and Team Fortress 2 was No. 14. Of course, Titanfall is likely much more popular with the console crowd, like its distant relative, Call of Duty (Titanfall’s developers created that popular Activision series). Call of Duty: Ghosts, which debuted in November, also isn’t in the top 20.

Respawn is actually releasing the first expansion for Titanfall today. The $10 add-on will introduce three new maps. PC gamers can get it on Origin now, while Xbox One owners can download it from Xbox Live.

While it used to track console gamers as well, Raptr stopped doing that in March. The new consoles don’t make it easy for the social network, and the company is going to focus on PC instead.（source：venturebeat）

4）34M hardcore gamers play an average of 22 hours a week — but Nintendo isn’t ‘core’ enough to count

Mike Minotti

It seems that all you ever hear about is the emerging casual market of gaming. Sure, those Candy Crush Saga and Minecraft players are a nice, new source of revenue for a lot of companies, but don’t forget about traditional gamers. We still like to play.

A lot.

According to the NPD Group, 34 million core gamers spend an average of 22 hours a week playing video games. The NPD Group defines a core gamer as anyone who plays at least five hours a week on a Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, or Mac. I’m not sure why the NPD Group doesn’t think Nintendo consoles or portables like the Vita and 3DS count as hardcore, but, hey, it’s not my report.

According to the NPD Group, you can’t just play five hours of Peggle 2 every week to qualify as a core gamer. It’s only counting those who play the action, adventure, fighting, flight, massively multiplayer, racing, real-time strategy, role-playing, shooter, and sport genres.

“Core gamers are really the lifeblood of the industry, spending tremendous amounts of time on their hobby of choice,” said Liam Callahan, an industry analyst in a press release sent by the NPD Group to GamesBeat.  “With the new console generation off to a great start, we can expect the amount of time spent gaming to increase as more core gamers adopt them.”

The NPD Group also noted that two-thirds of core gamers play software on their mobile devices. Seventy-four percent also claimed that they would choose physical media over digital if the price was the same, although that number is down 5 points from last year. Digital media is on the rise.

Still, the biggest takeaway here is that core gamers are still demanding and willing to pay for content that suits their gaming needs. So the next time someone tells you traditional gaming is dying thanks to the casual market, you can slap them in the face before getting back to your 22 hours of weekly gaming bliss.（source:venturebeat）

5）Game-distribution platform (and messaging app) Kakao has driven 500 million downloads on iOS and Android

Jeffrey Grubb

The first company that figures out how to monetize word-of-mouth marketing is probably going to make a lot of money — oh, wait. Kakao is already doing that.

The South Korean messaging app KakaoTalk, which is also one of the biggest app-distribution platforms in the world, announced today that it has reached a total of 500 million downloads. That means that its users have clicked a link in its app, gone into the iOS App Store or Google Play, and downloaded software more than half a billion times. Kakao, along with its partner studios, offers these games on the chat app, players talk about them with one another, and then Kakao takes a cut of the revenue when someone installs it. This has helped the company bring in over $1 billion since adding games two years ago.

KakaoTalk now has over 145 million monthly active users, and it delivers over 6.5 billion messages every day. While it is popular in South Korea as well as in Japan (although less so), it doesn’t have much of a presence in the West, where WhatsApp is dominant.

“KakaoTalk has already become the greatest single source for driving mobile-game downloads from the App Store and Google Play Store,” reads a Kakao blog post. “No other source for mobile-game discovery even comes close to driving as many downloads.”

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Chat apps like Kakao, WeChat, and Line are massive in Asian markets. Developers in South Korea, Japan, and China rarely attempt to launch new games in those countries outside of those platforms, which is very different than in the West.

Kakao now has over 230 partners that it works with, and it has promoted more than 450 games on its service. The company revealed that every game it promotes reaches the top 10 on the most-downloaded chart on Android’s Google Play, which is an astonishing feat. It also explains why developers in Asia are lining up to work with Kakao.（source：venturebeat）