If this is to be believed..... wow, just staggering amounts!!! http://thinkgaming.com/app-sales-data/2/candy-crush-saga/ This is a graph for Candy Crush Saga.
Unfortunately that's $2.65 more than the average user would pay up front for something actually decent.
From a business standpoint freemium is a good route to go if you can afford user acquisition. If you cannot then you'll likely make little to no money if your monetization strategy is in app purchases alone. Keep in mind that 4% of Candy Crush users actually buy something inside the game. So that $800k daily revenue is based on 4% of their total userbase. AND 4% is very very good. Most free to play games aim for 1-2% of users to pay for something. So to put things in perspective from an indie standpoint : If you can't afford user acquisition then you better have a strong strategy for generating traffic as you will most likely not see anywhere near the number of downloads that Candy Crush sees. They pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a day to acquire new users. But with revenue in the millions each day... wouldn't you? Last I heard, across all platforms and worldwide... their daily revenue is $10 million? Not sure if that number was for Candy Crush or all of King's games. Regardless... it's a lot. Oh and to make GOOD money in the freemium realm : It's not required, but it's almost necessary in today's market: 1. You gotta be pushy with your in app purchases 2. You have to have some sort of timers or extreme grind 3. If you're too nice with your monetization then most people won't buy anything. Most people do not think : "Hey I'm gonna toss the developer a buck for making an awesome, user friendly, free-to-play game". Most people think : "This game is great, and I don't have to pay a thing." When you understand this mentality and you understand how to work with it then you have the fundamentals of what it takes to succeed in free to play gaming.
$298,553,575 a crappy game and crazy $.... that's just under 300 million a year seen many tv commercials to download the game for free, and now there pushing Pet Rescue game commercials. they also plan on hitting the stock market exchange to boost up even more $$$. wonder who are these Devs/owners are? must be blowing and burning money vs using wood in there fireplace to keep warm
Listened to a podcast the other day and they said there was some research which said 90-95% of all money freemium games make are from just 5% i think it was of the users playing it. Its like its a gambling addiction, they have to get 'everything' in the game etc. I can see how that works, i read often here how people need to get 100% in a game (i just tend to get to the end of a level and play the next one). So people with quite addictive addictions must be a nightmare when it comes to games with IAP's If thats true (5% of freemium players make up 90-95% of profit for these freemium game companies) thats crazy. But again someone in another thread admitted they bought a $100 IAP, crazy !
Find it so frustrating, i have friends with iphones (just have to have the latest gadget !) and only have a few games, and of course Candy Crush is one of them. Its awful, just so many other better games on the app store but the masses seem to love it (sigh)