Q
ralinsaur asked:
Are there specific reasons that the mobile platform isn't approached by the industry as a platform for more "serious"/full fledged gaming experiences? Most (all?) major publishers that stepped into the mobile space usually end up with some sort of gacha (ie Galaxy of Heroes) or freemium (Diablo Immortal) experience. Was it determined the general consumer is averse to a fully paid full game w/ live service style monetization model but on mobile?
A
It’s really really hard to change a well-established expectation from a huge audience once it’s been set, especially if it feels like we’re taking something away from the user. Because the vast majority of apps on mobile are free (and a huge percentage of paid apps have prices less than $5 USD), the expectation among the user base is already set. A huge amount of the target audience will simply move on to the next thing because there are so many other alternate options available for free, rather than pay up front to give our game a chance.
Any experience on mobile, premium or no, is still expected to be free to play. At the same time, every premium experience needs to earn back the premium budget spent to create and market it. If the game must be free in order to capture a sufficient audience and it needs to earn money somehow, then freemium (or gacha) is basically locked in as a business model since there’s no other way to make back that development and marketing cost. That is the unfortunate tragedy of the mobile platform. We do see games that are a more premium experience like Genshin Impact, Diablo Immortal, and the like, but they are also the same kind of freemium/gacha games but with better production values because too many players on the platform won’t pay for a game up front.
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askagamedev posted this Are there specific reasons that the mobile platform isn't approached by the industry as a platform for more...