New Business - Mobile or Steam (PC) ?

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3 comments, last by Hodgman 5 years, 1 month ago
Hello community ! 
For a new Business in Game Development, which platform is better to start with and why ? Mobile (Appstore, Google Play) or PC (Steam) ?
 
Also:
Which strategy will have more chances to assure a ”sustainable” income and a company growth ?
 

 

  1. A medium quality FPS game (good, almost realistic graphics, decent story but definitely not a AAA game), with no marketing budget, published on steam. (Team: 5 developers and 5 salary.)
  2. 5-6 Hyper Casual games with good quality graphics and mechanics (at least 2-3 of them with new and original mechanics), with a good marketing strategy ? (Team: 2 developers and 2 salary.)

 

 
Tough choice, I know :D
Thank you in advance for all your feedback ;)
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PC good for indies. But you must understand that your game must bring really good experience for player. Or be very good copy-and-paste of another success one.

Mobile hard, If you are not a big mobile company with money for commercial.

Also you can try to sell your game for Epic Games Store.

2 hours ago, Devian said:

with no marketing budget

If you don't do marketing, nobody will know about your game, so nobody will buy your game.

These numbers are complete guesses. Take this is a grain of salt.

I don't have direct experience here, but from what I've seen from colleagues, a successful hyper casual mobile game at a sufficient level of polish to succeed is multiple years work from 2 developers, and requires a marketing budget (and prior experience of mobile monetisation strategy). You could put out 5 quick casual games just as research / training, not a profitable business model.

Mobile seems very hit or miss. Success is probably over US$10K/month in revenue, or otherwise under US$100 total revenue. One or the other - no in between ?

Steam is not indie friendly these days without a marketing budget. Their algorithms changed last year to amplify games that were already selling, rather than trying to help users discover un-advertised indie games. Again, this makes it very hit or miss. A successful underdog might get $100k on launch and then $1k per month.

The safer bet would be to take a demo of your game to someone else with capital, and get them to pay for you to port it to Sony, Xbox, Nintendo, iOS, etc and pay for marketing, in exchange for most of the profits. They take on the risk and you get paid up-front to do the work... You also get a bigger chance of a successful launch by selling on multiple stores with a single marketing spend.

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