After those Hitman, Assassin’s Creed and Resident Evil games bombed on iOS, we asked Playdigious boss Abrial Da Costa why the French firm seems to be doing just fine with its premium game ports.
But he took a little while to get back to us. It turns out the company was in the process of being bought by VC firm Griffin Games Partners for around $12.2m, as revealed last week.
So, with that small matter out of the way, Da Costa was able to speak publicly again about how Playdigious has built a business on PC and console game ports where other, much larger players seem to have got it all wrong.
“Some publishers treat mobile platforms like any other distribution channel, applying the same rules,” says Da Costa. “They think they can reach audiences solely on the strength of franchises that succeeded on PC and consoles – that’s insufficient.”
“Mobile involves thousands of different devices, different accessibility needs, different play patterns, technical download limitations, and crucially, different purchasing power. You must address mobile with all these constraints in mind, especially avoiding AAA pricing equivalent to PC or console.”
Indeed, Playdigious’ catalogue of indie game ports have shorter, snappier play patterns, lower prices and an existing fanbase of players. So for a game to be ported over and released through Playdigious, they should meet at least a couple of these requirements.
“We’ve identified that platformers, RPGs, roguelikes, and strategy games perform best on mobile platforms,” Da Costa explains. “An indie game needs to have achieved commercial success and built an engaged, substantial community to maximize its chances on mobile. Depending on the project, our threshold is typically between 500K to 1m units sold and 10k reviews on Steam.”
The business model also varies per game between a straight port to a subscription service like Apple Arcade or Netflix, a full premium launch or a ‘free-to-start’ model – that is, free to download, but with a paywall a little way into the game.
Loop Hero has performed well as a free to start game, says Da Costa, but publishers must take care and experiment with the paywall to get it right. “The challenge is that in order to have a good conversion rate you need to have engaged users playing long enough during the demo,” he explains.
Puzzle game Shapez also delivered good results with a free to start model, while TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge “initially disappointed” with free-to-paid conversion rates. TMNT sales have not dropped as fast as many other titles in Playdigious’ portfolio after launch, though, and it is also available through Netflix, which will have factored into the launch numbers.
“The later the paywall, the fewer users remain…this requires extensive playtesting and A/B testing on paywall positioning during trials, paywall design, and user experience,” Da Costa adds. “If we can’t create a sufficiently compelling game experience during the trial period, we launch with a premium model instead.”
Playdigious also has deep ties to subscription services Apple Arcade and Netflix, even though both services have moved away from original and indie games recently. “We meet with them regularly to update them on our lineup,” Da Costa says. “They’re important partners who share our commitment to game quality.”
“Editorial strategies shift frequently within these corporations. You need to be patient and wait for the right timing when everything aligns. Independent projects are still carefully scrutinised by these services.”
Indeed, Da Costa adds that store featuring – which has been less and less effective in recent years – is still “crucial” and “mandatory” for indie game launches on mobile, and requires regular engagement with the platform holders.
“It’s equally important to engage audiences early through pre-orders and pre-registration,” he concludes. “We consistently receive store support at launch because our partners know our games are high quality with strong potential for mobile audiences.”
