Research from Slice Intelligence reveals just how much mobile gamers spend on in-app purchases and how they compare to traditional console gamers.
According to Slice Intelligence, the average player on mobile spend $86.50 per year on in-app purchases. That’s about $5 less than what is spent by those gaming on traditional consoles (91.58).
Spend-Per-Player-video-games.pngHowever, certain mobile games are attracting spends significantly higher than the average. The heavily promoted Game of War: Fire Age has an average spend per paying user of a whopping $549.69, more than any other mobile game, and way ahead of that spent on the next high-spend game, Summoners War, which sees an average of $272.41.
“Most of us think of hardcore video gamers as those paying extravagantly for immersive and complex games, but data shows that mobile gamers are in fact the big spenders,” says Slice Intelligence analyst Taylor Stanton. “What do Game of War gamers buy? Crates of gold, with the average item price hovering at $52 dollars.”
A recent study by app marketing firm Sensor Tower found that U.S. iPhone users spent an average of $35 on app downloads and purchases last year, with more being spent on games than any other category. Of the average $35 annual spend, $25 was on mobile games while in second place was music, accounting for just $3.40.
Social ($1.80), entertainment ($1) and lifestyle ($0.40) make up the top five spend categories and the remaining $6.80 was spent across 18 other categories. Of those, health and fitness saw the biggest spend ($0.35) and catalogs the least ($0.01).
According to Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower, “the games category offers developers access to not only the largest subset of app consumers, but also the one willing to spend the most on premium apps and IAP. We estimate that each game install – an average of 10.5 per device – grosses an average of $2.43.”