March 20th, 2012 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | No Comments »
It sounds logical, but since yesterday the internet is buzzing over the complaint that free games are killing battery life of smartphones. Research from Abhinav Pathak points out that heavy users can do four times longer if they switch to ad-free.
According to his findings, 75% of the energy consumption of ad funded games goes into processing new adverts during the game and reporting back statistics about the gamer. There are apps that can drain a full battery in 90 minutes.
One of the things not mentioned in many of the online reports about this problem is data consumption. Of course this isn’t a big issue within reach of a free Wi-Fi network, but on 3G this is a whole other story. Consumers will be paying the bill for the data sent and received. This includes the same banners and statistics which could make an ad-funded game much more expensive than a paid variant.
