December 5, 2019

Sips Happen #1: Aggretsuko on mobile, Switch in China

Sips Happen #1: Aggretsuko on mobile, Switch in China

The favourite piece of news I received this week has to be the release of an Aggretsuko-themed app on iOS and Android. While not usually in the core audience for Episode- or Choices-like content, this brand partnership resonates very much with me, being a huge fan of what Sanrio has built with this character. Be sure to watch the show on Netflix if you haven’t already.

State of the Market

• Sensor Tower monthly: Top Mobile Games by Revenue in November 2019. No real surprise here.
• Newzoo released Newzoo Pro, the paid version of their (very PC- and console-focused) Markket Insights service.
• Optimising your game onboarding is as critical as ever, as mobile games are uninstalled 34% more than apps (Appsflyer).
• PC Gamer asks THE question: Are indie games too cheap? How can we educate our players to the real cost of making games?
• As per the recent App Annie report (email-wall), Generation Z, the much-coveted mobile native generation, would rather watch games than play them. When they play them? 3 titles from Supercell top the chat.

China

• The Nintendo-Tencent partnership is bringing the Switch to China on December 10th, with noted absence of Zelda:BOTW, Super Mario Odyssey and Mario Kart 8.
  • It may be the time to brush up on what makes a successful Chinese localisation with the Archero case study from GameRefinery.
• LONG READ OF THE WEEK: After the surprise announcement that Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be stepping down from their current role with Google/Alphabet, Abacus looks back at the complicated relationship between Google and Beijing.

Marketing and User Acquisition

• Kitfox Games’ Victoria Tran outlines her $0 Marketing Game Guide with lots of actionable tactics to put your indie game out there.
• Appsflyer released a new Landing Page tool that aims at fixing the broken Social-Media-to-App journey.
• Eric Seufert takes a gander at the evolution of the Facebook Ad Manager and forecasts what could come next.
  • On the subject of Facebook Ads, if you’re wondering what resets the learning phase, there's a Quantmar answer for that.
  • And Jon Loomer highlights a new feature that allows you to run Split tests easily when duplicating ad sets.
• Splitmetrics has announced an upcoming Apple Search Ads certification. you can get an early access to the certification by brushing up on your ASA knowledge.
• Is D7-ROAS the worst KPI to optimize toward since CPI? Best answer courtesy of @thomasBCN: « not necessarily bad to bid on, it’s a poor metric to assess & report on ».

Product Management

• One additional player joins the header-bidding race: Chartboost.
• Kolibri shares the eight lessons that they learnt on their path to build a hit idle game.
• GoPractice: how to increase the effectiveness of your product analysis.

One last sip

• Marketing blunder: Sony PS4 line-up video accused of being full of plagiarised animations, so much that they had to pull it.
• Another Victoria Tran’s gem: an introvert’s guide to networking. Super useful even for extroverts who don’t really know how to navigate industry events and meetups.
• One year later: fallout from Quantic Dream and Riot Games lawsuits shows the strength of banding up together to fight abusive corporate behaviour.
• Following the announcement in September that Louis Vuitton partnered with League of Legends, VentureBeats purports that luxury fashion and esport could be match made in marketing heaven.
• Creativity Masterclass: NHK World on-demand series 10 years with Hayao Miyazaki is an unexpected window into the artist’s creative process.