Most mobile games cost less than a cup of coffee, yet most people will refuse to play titles on their phones unless they're free-to-play.
When a new, much-anticipated game is released on console or PC, most gamers will have no issue spending their hard-earned money on it. $40, $50, often as much as $60. However, mobile games don't seem to warrant that same kind of affluence. Not even close. A large chunk of people who play games on their phones won't even consider downloading a game unless it's free-to-play.
Games Industry highlighted a terrific example of this. Ustwo Games has a quote on the wall from what its developers claim to be their favorite review. "Thank you for making this game, I thought it was really beautiful, one of the best things I've played on mobile, and it really impacted me. I just thought £3.99 ($4.96) was too much." This sums up the approach most people take towards paying for games on their phones.
It really is hard to pinpoint why this is, and when this mentality was instilled. For starters, there are a fair few titles on mobile which are just ports from consoles - not even tweaked or reduced versions, but literally the entire game in all its glory in the palms of our hands. Plus, the price will be greatly reduced compared to the console version. Will people pay that reduced price, though? Probably not.
Referring back to Ustwo, Monument Valley is an example of a console-quality title that was released on mobile. Due to the amount of work put into the project, it wasn't feasible to make it free-to-play. Ustwo admits that it took a huge risk by making Monument Valley a premium mobile game, but it is one that paid off. Perhaps with the right marketing and quality of game, more people are willing to pay on for mobile games than we thought.
Monument Valley is the exception the rule, though. That's why this past week, Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass have both launched. These are subscription services to mobile games that might well kill off the gaming section of their respective app stores. From what we've seen so far, a great many of the games on both services are console-quality, and all for $4.99 a month. The question is, will gamers view that $5 fee in the same way as they have viewed spending a buck or two for mobile games, or more like the $10 a month they spend on services such as Netflix that they don't even notice leaving their account?
Source: Games Industry