Brace for reality check!

Since IDFA deprecation, the best hitters in the industry have only batted.100 for Casual releases, and.150 for Midcore/Core game attempts.

Yep. That's 10% and 15% respectively, for the top 50 casual and midcore-core publishers.

And for other publishers*? Overall, success rates are well below 1%.

This is why you MUST take an aggressive approach to rapid testing and product-market fit validation.

DO NOT build a mobile game without first demonstrating a CPI floor well below your competitors.

For example

  1. CPI-test 50-100 casual game ideas over 6 months.
  2. Build D1 Retention builds for 3 of these, test, decide which to develop further
  3. This process *should* boost your odds to the 10-20% range.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

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Note: This data set looked at Casual and Midcore-Core titles, and so defined 'success' as $500k+ WW NET-IAP rev in July '24, ignoring ad revenue, and excluding hyper-casual titles.

From the 52 top publishers below, between May 1st 2021 and May 30th 2024 there were 157 casual launches and 100 midcore/core.

CN, JP, SK, HK pubs were excluded.

Data from AppMagic.