Popular 'Monument Valley' Game Earned More Than $5.8M, Saw 1.7M Sales on iOS

[RobertMartens]

It does depend. And that's why some companies focus on Android first. There's a lot of things Android is without, and iOS has too much of. At the same time, a lot of people on Android don't want particular apps that a lot on iOS do.

Are you saying there is something fundamentally different about who Android users are compared with who iOS users are?

"a lot of people on Android don't want particular apps"

We are talking about millions of people. How could they be grouped into anything?

 

[KALLT]

These numbers are mind-boggling. Android and Amazon are almost insignificant. If they didn’t release their app for iOS first, they would have made huge losses. It also shows that what people perceive as a ‘money grab’ is far away from the truth. I hope that more developers do this to help get that cheap image of app development off this world.

 

[RobertMartens]

Knowing all this people still have no issue with just copying it and paying nothing.

Nobody owes you anything. Make it if you want. Good luck.
Copying is not a crime. Tough luck.

----------

And no, nobody "deserves" free software. Be grateful for the awesome stuff developers do, and ask yourself when was the last time you gave away hundred or thousands of hours of your own labour to people you don't know.

Software is by its very nature free. It is free to copy and free to reuse.
Shakespeare is also free.

People didn't feel that they should have to give more money. That is how they felt. So what? Customer research is always good to know. Especially when a lot of money is at stake.

 

[Keirasplace]

Are you saying there is something fundamentally different about who Android users are compared with who iOS users are?

"a lot of people on Android don't want particular apps"

We are talking about millions of people. How could they be grouped into anything?

The demos are different. Most Android devices are a lot less expensive than IOS devices.

That could mean :
a) Android users have less money (Average IOS device is much more expensive)
b) Android users don't spend money (even if they have it) (so, they could have the money, but don't spend it on a phone or apps)
c) Android users buy less capable phones (with fragmentation and restricted app selection as consequence)
d) Android users buy phones mainly for basic functions (don't buy many apps, my aunt falls in that category and she has an Android phone)
c) Android users have a higher tendency to download free apps (or pirate paid ones because its much much easier to do so on that platform).

All of the above have been determined to be true. You can Google a while for confirmation.

This explains why IOS can still have the leads in Ads (for Google), mobile Web browsing, mobile buying and application purchases despite being behind Android in overall market share.

In fact, if IOS wasn't subsidizing Android devellopment, the app selection would resemble that of Windows Phones!!

 

[RobertMartens]

Also what's crazy is ...how people are expecting creative work like this quality to be free. Sad.

Not expecting, just wanting.

 

[Porco]

They deserve all the success they've achieved, it's a beautiful game/experience, good luck to them.

On the price-to-legnth-of-game thing, I spent less than the price of a trip to the cinema on the game and its IAPs, and spent longer than most films last, and enjoyed it a lot more than many films I've paid to see. And I get to replay as many times as I like in the future. It just depends how you look at it.

 

[FieldingMellish]

The article leads me to think of apps and games as being developed the way movie studios come out with films to watch. Some are a hit, others less so.

 

[malexandria]

Game Development Costs

I don't think I'll ever understand the economics of game development costs. Granted I haven't seen this game so I don't know the fidelity on it, but $800K to develop an IOS game?

 

[msephton]

I don't think I'll ever understand the economics of game development costs. Granted I haven't seen this game so I don't know the fidelity on it, but $800K to develop an IOS game?

Software development is difficult, time consuming and requires a lot of skill.

8 people made this over around 1.5 years, which is equivalent to about 13 man years of effort.

 

[882188]

But I thought android was winning the OS battle.

It is. More revenue on the iphone only means that it's hard to pirate apps.
You can easily pirate apps on android, that's a plus for me and millions of android users.

 

[blackcrayon]

It does depend. And that's why some companies focus on Android first. There's a lot of things Android is without, and iOS has too much of. At the same time, a lot of people on Android don't want particular apps that a lot on iOS do.

I would think that games would be as equal footing as you can get- since that rules out some features of the OS that would make the app more or less capable on iOS vs. Android. Especially a game like this that doesn't require a really high end GPU or other hardware.

I'd be interested to know which companies focus on Android first- other than platform specific tweaks it seems like just about every game, major kind of productivity software, or even 3rd party peripheral support (where it's something that would work on either platform like a bluetooth robot or something) come out on iOS first.

 

[pinchez]

I'm speaking as someone who owns both an iPad Air + Nvidia Shield Tablet and enjoys using both devices.

Firstly I can't quite believe it costs this much to develop a mobile game, I can buy 3 very good houses for that where I'm from!

Secondly I think unlike Android there will be a large proportion of iOS users who are not tech savvy and will delve no deeper than browsing / App store and are very happy in Apples walled garden. There's a heck of allot of grandparents out there who have bought or been bought iPads because they're renown to be easy to use and these type of people are more likely to buy Apps.

For example I've given up with both App and Play stores because of all the freemium stuff and instead prefer to do my gaming through emulators that are widely available on android without any sort of jail braking and unlike iOS it's a breeze to use Joypads. Maybe the ease of being able to play vastly better games through emulators via Android devices could be part of the reason Android users don't buy as many Apps as iOS users.

 

[Megakazbek]

I wouldn't call it a game though. It's a nice graphics and design demonstration, but all gameplay consists of monotonous tapping through short levels, which isn't very interesting.

 

[blackcrayon]

I wouldn't call it a game though. It's a nice graphics and design demonstration, but all gameplay consists of monotonous tapping through short levels, which isn't very interesting.

Huh? It's a puzzle game. That's how those games work. That's like saying 'I wouldn't call Bioshock a game. It's got nice graphics and all but the gameplay consists of jerking a couple of sticks around and mashing buttons and searching bodies for health powerups.'

Secondly I think unlike Android there will be a large proportion of iOS users who are not tech savvy and will delve no deeper than browsing / App store and are very happy in Apples walled garden. There's a heck of allot of grandparents out there who have bought or been bought iPads because they're renown to be easy to use and these type of people are more likely to buy Apps.

For example I've given up with both App and Play stores because of all the freemium stuff and instead prefer to do my gaming through emulators that are widely available on android without any sort of jail braking and unlike iOS it's a breeze to use Joypads. Maybe the ease of being able to play vastly better games through emulators via Android devices could be part of the reason Android users don't buy as many Apps as iOS users.

Funny you still hear things like this, but I haven't seen any evidence that the majority of Android users are more "tech savvy" than iOS users. You're talking about a small nerdy percentage of the people on either platform that get really geeky with their stuff. And of course the other side of the coin is that if Apple's "garden" is good enough, people don't need or want to look elsewhere for entertainment on their device.

Also, if you're tech savvy, or even if you're not, it's extremely easy to jailbreak iOS for emulators (and of course many emulators are available for iOS without jailbreaking, if you're tech savvy) and use controllers like the PS3 controller for games. Not as easy as Android, but not enough to account for huge differences in game sales.

 

[Keirasplace]

It is. More revenue on the iphone only means that it's hard to pirate apps.
You can easily pirate apps on android, that's a plus for me and millions of android users.

That also means your lucky to have decent apps at all. So, hey, steal away...

Also, you do realize that if NOBODY makes money (manufacturers, develloppers, etc), that's to the detriment of the future of your beloved Android Platform. Think about that.

Pirating a $50 dollar games that's something I could almost believe would have not too high a damage (since the pirate wouldn't be willing, or possibly even able to buy it at $50 and those that buy it would still give the developers significant money), but pirating a $1-3 dollar game... Well, that shaky justification doesn't stand scrutiny at all; doing that is just massively lame.

If someone plays a $1-3 dollar game for hours that cost $1M and years of work to develop, and doesn't want to pay those few bucks for their enjoyment, well there's no way to spin this that makes that person anything else than a cheap twit.

 

[brentonbrenton]

Funny how this game made the most revenue from iOS, despite Android having a significantly greater mobile device market share. I guess this just proves that market share isn't much of a competitive advantage.

In terms of market share, this game is probably installed on more Android handsets than iOS devices though. Where I used to work in an IT department a number of the Android users were very vocal about never paying a single cent for any of the apps they would install and instead pirate them all.

I'm glad to see this game has done so well, I thoroughly enjoyed it myself and was happy to pay for it. It was designed so well and with such unusual puzzles I can see myself playing it through at least a few times and not just the once.

 

[maflynn]

Gone are the days of a simple developer rolling out a great app. While there are still plenty of those folks it appears that the cost of creating applications is skyrocketing. Over 800k for the initial product - yikes.

 

[vladi]

I am very suspicious about the development cost of the game, if they really shelled out a $900,000 to develop it then somebody got screwed here. Project like this should not cost more than $120,000 with outsourced developers and domestic designers. And when it comes to the design this games didn't really come up with anything special they just ripped apart MC Esher alike artists. To me it looks like a very streamedline design, not that every section looks different and features different concept.

In other words forget that this game cost $900,000 cause it did not. It cost $100,000 to develop and rest of the money was used for marketing purposes and the push. When you are making the app you have to make sure that you are seen next to millions of other garbage releases. Actually app business, especially gaming is the worst venture you can go into if you don't have marketing money, ratio should be at least 1:7 and even then no body can guarantee you will make money. Even if you are featured by Apple doesn't guarantee you a success, that's how app market is saturated.

Also forget about that Android - iOS market thing. This game was clearly focused on iOS hence it sold the most on iOS, Android is just an another option. There are also many apps or games that do better on Android then on iOS. Again its all where you put your marketing money in.

 

[Keirasplace]

Gone are the days of a simple developer rolling out a great app. While there are still plenty of those folks it appears that the cost of creating applications is skyrocketing. Over 800k for the initial product - yikes.

They could have done much better with outsourcing most development... I'd say 1/3 the cost, or the same cost but the app being done in half the time (you don't get a full 3 times faster because as everyone know, adding people to a project doesn't scale linearly).

But, you need to have some experience with that to make it work well. Probably not good for a first timer, or someone without very good project management experience (and very good local contacts).

A lot of people don't like losing control of every aspect of a project and thus develop locally; this increases the financial risk of the project while decreasing the risk that the app will not be done properly. So, you have to choose.

 

[msephton]

I am very suspicious about the development cost of the game, if they really shelled out a $900,000 to develop it then somebody got screwed here.

It took 1.5 years to make the game, with 8 people. Not counting contractors.

Simple maths shows that $900k is right for that team and that period of time on an average yearly salary.

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Gone are the days of a simple developer rolling out a great app. While there are still plenty of those folks it appears that the cost of creating applications is skyrocketing. Over 800k for the initial product - yikes.

I was just thinking about that and it's scary what those numbers are.

 

[brdeveloper]

Funny how this game made the most revenue from iOS, despite Android having a significantly greater mobile device market share. I guess this just proves that market share isn't much of a competitive advantage.

It may have to do with advertising. I bought Monument Valley, Android version, but Google Play didn't exposed it in the main page as a great game. I only discovered that Monument Valley ever existed by reading a blog which recommended it. Otherwise, I'd be only exposed to Angry Birds and driving games.

 

[brdeveloper]

Can someone explain to me why it takes so much to develop these games? Is it a graphic design thing? Paying personnel for man-hours?

- Concept. It's not like "let's build an Escher-inspired game". There is a lot more steps;

- Build an API to ease the development. You won't use the default iOS/Android graphical API because you'd have to write more and be more prone to bugs since each developer could code by his/her own taste. You need something like (but not exactly, not even the syntax, it's just an example):

thisScene.setBackground(
      new Background(
            [{'fadeSpeed',defaultFadeSpeed}],
            saaraTemplate)
      );

- Project management: what to do first, how long it should take, what to do if it takes longer or faster, who will do which. Building a plan like this takes time too. Respecting these rules makes the project slower in a first sight, but it makes things easier with time.

- Graphics design, music production, getting the skills to develop faster takes time.

And that's why the second iteration of the game was developed in less time and probably next iterations will be even faster unless they make some substantial modification on graphics, concept, etc.

 

[sracer]

Unless this game phones home to some server, how do they know how many pirated copies are out there?

 

[fishkorp]

Unless this game phones home to some server, how do they know how many pirated copies are out there?

Most apps use some sort of analytic framework to track installs, time spent in app, etc. Very common.



And to everyone complaining about the development cost, you all clearly have no idea what the rate/salary of a good mobile developer is. If it did indeed take 8 developers 1.5 years to develop the app, they actually got a bargain. ~$100k/year for a good mobile developer is a steal.