Last year during deep COVID times, I downloaded a bunch of games. Haven’t played them in years.
All garbage. They were infested in adware, and any attempt to go up a level required watching ads. Turn off one’s internet connection and the game would fail to work.
I deleted them all. The developers should be ashamed of themselves. I would gladly spend money to access quality games that doesn’t resort to this kind of model.
Ironic that it’s a category that Apple is very passive in as far as software goes.
I wish Apple would take gaming more seriously. Apple already have enough garbage on their platforms. Time to create great games and take MS’/Sony’s cake too. Nintendo will always be around for the same reason, great games.
I would be skeptical of this headline until there as actual clarification on what "profit" they are talking about. Actual net-income (actual profit)? Operating profit (before EBITDA), what is defined as "gaming profit".
Apple provided a revenue share of a gaming market that included the consoles, their definition of the gaming market in the Epic vs Apple lawsuit. They estimated that they have 24% to 25% of this "gaming" market revenue. It might be possible that they have more net income with only 25% revenue share as the remaining players who have 75% might be operating at much lower margins. However, it's beyond belief that Sony and MS do not operate their digital stores at similar margins to Apple, so it begs the question of what revenue is being included for the game consoles.
Then, this headline could be a population density trend, not a trend of real significance. Apple has a 1 to 1.5 billion unit market for casual touch screen games. All the consoles added up together probably do not approach that many units. So, the statistic (Apple has moe gaming profit then all the gaming companies combined) is really just saying that Apple sells more iPhones than MS, Sony and Nintendo sell consoles (or their hardware). So, uh, no shit, Apple can earn more money by taking a cut of revenue of people putting money into games with their 1b to 1.5b unit market versus consoles who have an installed base of 500m? 800m units?
Lastly, Apple has zero market power over the consoles, other than competing for a person's time. Console's primary games are FPS or overhead player simulation games, whatever they are called. iOS has very few of these games. The Epic lawsuit shows that Android and Apple only contributed 7% of Fortnite revenues. The vast majority of Apple's games seem to be these passive time killer puzzle games like Candy Crush, played in bed, waiting somewhere, etc. There seems to be very little overlap, and therefore a comparison of revenue between the two may be like comparing Apples and Oranges.
Must be the microtransactions. But when you think of it they have over 2 billion iOS devices, not including macs. That’s easily to accomplish more money than all the largest game manufacturers combined
Last year during deep COVID times, I downloaded a bunch of games. Haven’t played them in years.
All garbage. They were infested in adware, and any attempt to go up a level required watching ads. Turn off one’s internet connection and the game would fail to work.
I deleted them all. The developers should be ashamed of themselves. I would gladly spend money to access quality games that doesn’t resort to this kind of model.
Apple Arcade exists.
F2P games are like that. There are paid games that have none of that shit. Civilization 5 for example. Tons of great indie games. They cost money.
Ironic that it’s a category that Apple is very passive in as far as software goes.
I wish Apple would take gaming more seriously. Apple already have enough garbage on their platforms. Time to create great games and take MS’/Sony’s cake too. Nintendo will always be around for the same reason, great games.
Again, Apple Arcade exists. They’re paying developers for those titles. What else do you want them to do?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I have no clue what the WSJ is talking about. If you look at the court document that shows the numbers, Apple's revenue from games was $5.2 billion in 2019. Sony's was $4.2 billion and Nintendo was $2.3 billion. I don't know how the WSJ figures Apple earns more than all those other companies combined when the numbers show otherwise.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I have no clue what the WSJ is talking about. If you look at the court document that shows the numbers, Apple's revenue from games was $5.2 billion in 2019. Sony's was $4.2 billion and Nintendo was $2.3 billion. I don't know how the WSJ figures Apple earns more than all those other companies combined when the numbers show otherwise.
They are making up their numbers:
"Apple’s operating profits from games that year totaled $8.5 billion, according to the Journal analysis"
This is the same author, Tim Higgins, that wrote the Tesla book.
It's a common soundbite used in news today to say something is more than all their competitors combined so if the numbers don't add up to this, they just use 'analysis' to make up their own reality.
Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Activision profit listed there add up to at least $9.7b vs $5.2b for Apple. Not that it would even matter if they did make more, Apple has 1.5 billion customers, nearly 10x what the console companies have each. Activision owns games like Candy Crush and Microsoft owns Minecraft so they make a lot of their profit from iOS gamers too.
Apple would still make a lot of profit if mobile games used the $60 upfront per premium game (plus $20-60 for season passes and DLC) setup used on consoles. Apple's (and Google's) profit comes from serving a much larger amount of players.
Comments
All garbage. They were infested in adware, and any attempt to go up a level required watching ads. Turn off one’s internet connection and the game would fail to work.
I deleted them all. The developers should be ashamed of themselves. I would gladly spend money to access quality games that doesn’t resort to this kind of model.
I wish Apple would take gaming more seriously. Apple already have enough garbage on their platforms. Time to create great games and take MS’/Sony’s cake too. Nintendo will always be around for the same reason, great games.
Apple provided a revenue share of a gaming market that included the consoles, their definition of the gaming market in the Epic vs Apple lawsuit. They estimated that they have 24% to 25% of this "gaming" market revenue. It might be possible that they have more net income with only 25% revenue share as the remaining players who have 75% might be operating at much lower margins. However, it's beyond belief that Sony and MS do not operate their digital stores at similar margins to Apple, so it begs the question of what revenue is being included for the game consoles.
Then, this headline could be a population density trend, not a trend of real significance. Apple has a 1 to 1.5 billion unit market for casual touch screen games. All the consoles added up together probably do not approach that many units. So, the statistic (Apple has moe gaming profit then all the gaming companies combined) is really just saying that Apple sells more iPhones than MS, Sony and Nintendo sell consoles (or their hardware). So, uh, no shit, Apple can earn more money by taking a cut of revenue of people putting money into games with their 1b to 1.5b unit market versus consoles who have an installed base of 500m? 800m units?
Lastly, Apple has zero market power over the consoles, other than competing for a person's time. Console's primary games are FPS or overhead player simulation games, whatever they are called. iOS has very few of these games. The Epic lawsuit shows that Android and Apple only contributed 7% of Fortnite revenues. The vast majority of Apple's games seem to be these passive time killer puzzle games like Candy Crush, played in bed, waiting somewhere, etc. There seems to be very little overlap, and therefore a comparison of revenue between the two may be like comparing Apples and Oranges.
"Apple’s operating profits from games that year totaled $8.5 billion, according to the Journal analysis"
This is the same author, Tim Higgins, that wrote the Tesla book.
The reported numbers are listed here:
https://www.vgchartz.com/article/448632/court-docs-reveal-profits-for-gaming-divisions-of-microsoft-sony-nintendo-more/
It's a common soundbite used in news today to say something is more than all their competitors combined so if the numbers don't add up to this, they just use 'analysis' to make up their own reality.
Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft and Activision profit listed there add up to at least $9.7b vs $5.2b for Apple. Not that it would even matter if they did make more, Apple has 1.5 billion customers, nearly 10x what the console companies have each. Activision owns games like Candy Crush and Microsoft owns Minecraft so they make a lot of their profit from iOS gamers too.
Apple would still make a lot of profit if mobile games used the $60 upfront per premium game (plus $20-60 for season passes and DLC) setup used on consoles. Apple's (and Google's) profit comes from serving a much larger amount of players.