[casual_games] Casual games on MacOS

[Dave Rohrl]

Your math is a bit off.  If Mac sales were 3% of the market (and I suspect the 10% number may be more accurate given Mac users' greater predilection to purchase), then that $10MM number would represent 500K units sold, not 500K trials.  This suggests something like 30M trials.

 

That said, I do think it's hard for a new company to build much of a business in a $10-30MM market with strong established market leaders.  I can't advocate doing a casual game exclusively for the Mac; the revenue just isn't there.  The question that developers should be asking themselves is how the incremental development costs of doing a Mac port (or using a multiplatform framework) compare to 10% of expected revenues from their current projects (or forecasted sales from the other games they could be working on).

 

- DaveR

 

________________________________

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Donald
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 2:31 PM
To: 'IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Casual games on MacOS

 

Well, I don't know of any official studies.  But in my experience, I've worked for two different MAC game companies.  And in both cases the companies had to convert to PC because the MAC market was just too small to support them.  I don't think it's changed that much recently.

 

So here's my "unofficial" guess.  On my portal, about 3% of our visitors use a MAC.  If you take the number of total US revenue for casual games from 2005 it's about 350ml.  Using my 3%, I would guess the potential revenues for a MAC user base at about 10.5ml, or at 20 bucks ahead you could figure about 525,000 users.  The average US conversion is 1.5% so that would leave about 8,000 potential MAC gamers.  (That's if all half million MAC users demo'ed your game.)

 

Ok, maybe I have entirely too much time on my hands.

 

However, my two cents is that if it won't work on an iPod, it probably won't make enough money...long term.  Anyways, it's still too much of a risk for us right now.

 

Cheers!

 

Donald

xBlitz Entertainment

 

www.xblitz.com <http://www.xblitz.com/> 

 

________________________________

From: E. D. Bass [mailto:edb at CONCRETEALCHEMY.COM] 
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 2:06 PM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Casual games on MacOS

 

Thats a great question..... I'd be interested in that too

Jose Marin wrote: 

Hi.
 
Is there some study/report on how big is the market for casual games (or games in general) on MacOS?
 
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