Good news for consoles: nobody wants to pay full price for Resident Evil 4 on iPhone-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Even if you can afford an iPhone 15 full price video games are a step too far (Apple)

New figures suggest that releasing games like Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Death Stranding on high-end mobile has been a complete failure.

The current turmoil in the games industry threatens previously unimagined change, with the very concept of consoles now under question, especially as both Xbox and PlayStation embrace the PC format.

Consoles won’t be going away entirely, with Microsoft already confirming it’s working on next gen hardware, but while it’s tempting to imagine that mobile phones could eventually take over there is one intractable problem: no one wants to pay for anything on smartphones.

Most games are free or extremely cheap and although there have been recent attempts to charge full price for new games on high-end phones, new data reveals it’s been a complete failure.

Last year, big name games such as the Resident Evil 4 remake and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, were released on high-end iOS devices, attracting a lot of fanfare but, as it turns out, very few sales.

The caveat here is that the games only run on a few of the most expensive models of iPhone and iPad, so they weren’t available to everyone, but even so, it’s estimated that Mirage sold as little as 3,000 copies worldwide.

The game was downloaded around 123,000 times, since a small part of it was available to play for free as a sort of demo. To unlock the full game though costs £44.99 (the same as the console editions), which very few people were willing to pay.

Although there are no officially released figures the estimates come via mobilegamer.biz and suggest that only around 7,000 bought Resident Evil 4 on iOS, which was cheaper at £24.90 (it was originally going to be £57.99).

The moment it’s more than a few pounds, price seems to have relatively little effect on sales, with Resident Evil Village costing only £13 and yet seeing only around 5,750 sales. Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding costs £19.99 and seems to have sold only around 10,600.

These figures are only estimates, from a group called Appfigures, but a second set of figures from rival Appmagic are barely any better. They put Resident Evil 4’s sales at around 15,000 and Resident Evil Village as the biggest seller of the group, at around 34,000.

That’s still a miserably low figure but it’s also not a surprise as, for a long time, publishers have periodically tried to charge full price, or something close to it, for mobile versions of console games and it’s never worked.

In this case, the high-end devices are needed in order to run the games but not only does that exclude the majority of potential players but if you own a super-expensive iPhone or iPad you probably also already have a modern console or PC, that would be better suited to playing the games.

‘Premium indie games on mobile are usually priced at $5-10. This price range aligns better with the average spending habits of mobile gamers. This likely explains why these games find it easier to expand into the mobile gaming market and why AAA releases are underperforming,’ Appmagic’s Andrei Zubov told Mobilegamer.biz.

‘I fear that even if consumers realise they can play Assassin’s Creed Mirage on their phones and tablets, the $50 game unlock in-app purchase will end the decision making process right there,’ adds Appfigures’ Randy Nelson.

Technology may change over time, but prices only ever go up, so for the foreseeable future games publishers need consoles and gaming PCs as their primary format, especially given streaming and subscription services are still yet to prove themselves.

Resident Evil 4 key art (Capcom)

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Entertainment – MetroRead More