Digital commerce analysis firm, Slice Intelligence, revealed that mobile gamers spend an average of $86.5 on in-app purchases. This is only $5 less than the average sum PC and console gamers spend on their games, including the cost of the game itself and all additional DLC.
Most of us think of hardcore video gamers as those paying extravagantly for immersive and complex games, but data shows that mobile gamers are in fact the big spenders. The mobile game with the largest average in-app spend is Game of War, where players spend, on average, $550 dollars to insure their army conquers the competition. What do Game of War gamers buy? Crates of gold, with the average item price hovering at $52 dollars.
The company also found that the majority of gamers spend their money in one platform only, with only 19.2% of the studied sample spending money both mobile and PC or console games.
Additionally the report confirmed the effect of free-to-play "whales," the small percentage of players that make up the bulk of a free-to-play game's revenue. Data shows that only 10 percent of the mobile in-game purchasing population accounts for 90 percent of mobile gaming sales. Further the top one percent, the "white whales", of mobile gamers account for an astonishing 58 percent of the mobile gaming revenue from in-app purchases. This trend doesn’t occur among traditional games, where roughly 28 percent of the audience accounts for 90 percent of game sales.
