2010年已经充分证明，游戏应用在App Store获胜的法门，并非下载量本身，而是定期的活跃用户基数，比如说每日或每月几百万活跃用户等。

有了足够多的活跃用户之后，开发商还可以通过植入广告或内置付费功能，让免费游戏比纯粹的付费游戏更容易吸金。

Words-with-Friends

美国开发商Newtoy公司（曾为ngmoco公司开发《We Rule》游戏）所推出的《Words With Friends》正属于上述情况，据Gamasutra网站报道，该游戏的付费版本和免费版合并的每月营收已超过100万美元，原因何在？

那就是这款游戏的每月活跃用户是500万人，相当于用户每月玩游戏的时间是2.5亿分钟，每月广告印象是10亿次。

这就是该游戏的实力所在，所以移动广告平台Burstly才会向其他广告商提供针对《Words With Friends》的自助广告投放功能。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Newtoy’s making over $1 million per month from Words With Friends

As has been becoming clear throughout 2010, success on the App Store isn’t about downloads per se.

Instead, it’s about the regular activity of your user base, as measured in million of daily or monthly active users.

Get enough of them and, for most games, you can monetise them through ads or in-app purchases in a free game much more successfully then trying to sell them a paid product upfront.

Millions of words

The latest company to talk about this is US developer Newtoy, which launched with Chess With Friends, before finding success with Words With Friends. It also developed ngmoco’s We Rule.

In a nice Gamasutra article about freemium apps – which also has input from ngmoco and Get Set Games (of Mega Jump fame) – it’s reported the combined revenue of the paid and free versions of Words is over $1 million monthly.

The reason?

It has an audience of five million monthly active users, which amounts to over 250 million minutes of gameplay and one billion ad impressions each month.

Indeed, such is its power, that agency Burstly is offering other developers the ability to position their ads within Words With Friends.（source:pocketgamer）