Since stepping into the Apple Silicon era, one of the directions that Apple has been focusing on and trying to expand more is the gaming category. This includes bringing AAA games like the Resident Evil franchise, Assassin’s Creed, and Death Stranding, as well as releasing game porting tools like the Game Porting Toolkit, which just introduced version 2 at WWDC 2024. However, Apple’s investment in this might not yield as good results as expected.
According to Neil Long’s article on the mobilegamer.biz website, sales figures over the past 12 months for games like Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage have been relatively disappointing, as reported by AppMagic, an app market analysis company.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage has been downloaded 279,000 times with around 5,750 purchases, totaling revenue up to $221,000, which is less than that of Assassin’s Creed Rebellion, a mobile game that made $981,000 in its first 12 months.
Resident Evil Village garnered 817,000 downloads and $420,000 in revenue, with approximately 34,000 purchases.
Resident Evil 4 Remake saw 710,000 downloads in 6 months, generating $347,000 in revenue from around 15,000 purchases.
Death Stranding, which was recently released in January, had around 23,000 downloads and earned an estimated $348,000 in revenue.
Furthermore, data from Appfigures revealed that downloads for Assassin’s Creed Mirage were higher only on the first day of release, averaging less than 3,000 daily downloads now, with around 80 daily full game purchases.
Randy Nelson from Appfigures suggested that AAA games might have difficulty selling on smartphone platforms, as iPhone users may already possess gaming consoles and can experience these games in 4K resolution and cinematic sound quality for the same or lower price.
Andrei Zubov of AppMagic analyzed that games brought to Apple’s platform have already peaked in revenue levels from previous launches on other devices. Premium-level games in the smartphone market mostly consist of indie games with simple controls and unique art styles, focusing more on short gameplay experiences and often being free-to-play.
Zubov added that the smartphone gaming market has diverged from the console gaming market for a while now. From an Apple market perspective, expanding to support AAA games seems plausible, as it can at least encourage people to purchase the Pro models slightly more.
TLDR: Apple’s efforts to penetrate the gaming market with AAA titles like Resident Evil and Assassin’s Creed face challenges with lower-than-expected sales figures, highlighting the unique dynamics of the smartphone gaming landscape compared to consoles.
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