September 6th, 2006 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Research & Stats | No Comments »
Neil Stroter, researcher at the NPD group, published an article at gamedaily about our most beloved subject, the consumer. Neil is convinced they found out what makes the consumer buy our games.
The most important factor? The genre of the game. If people played it before, they’ll like it again. Right after that, consumers voted the good old free trial. Karl already commented on that in the way that the free trials are already missing. Who, these days develops still the free trials and makes successful rates of sales on them?
Right after these is the price (understandable) and familiarity with the publisher or developer. This would mean that the name of the developer is more appealing then a branded title? I wonder if I call any of Overloaded’s consumers and ask them to name five mobile game publishers, if they know more then one. Yes developers, it seems you should promote yourself more to the consumer instead of your games. Ok, I admit in the closing statement branded games are pointed toward as important, but it doesn’t show in the graphs.
The research also has bad news for all you reviewers out there. The reason for buying a game due to a review is only 5%. I don’t know what the percentage is for console/pc games, but we really need to improve this figure as reviews are one of the best tools for consumers not to buy a game they don’t like.
NPD also looked at the consumer satisfaction. There is real good news here. A massive 75% of the consumers is (very) satisfied with their mobile gaming experience and 69% of the consumers is thinking about a repeating visit.
The age is also investigated. Top age group is between 13 and 17 year old with 34%. Following after that is 25 till 34, representing 25% of the consumers. Surprisingly 18% of the consumers fall between those groups at ages 18 till 24. Does this mean they interviewed less people in that age group, or are we indeed talking about skipping a generation?
