The fall of Angry Birds

Last year I held a special webinar with an in-depth analysis of Angry Birds VS Tap Pet Hotel and how premium .99 games were going to be overtaken by free to play games.  That sounds obvious now, but remember, this was 12 months ago and at the time I held the webinar Tap Pet Hotel was only a few months old.  Many people on the webinar didn’t really know how social games worked.
So far the the app store has gone through two phases.  The second phase completely took over about 6 months ago.

Phase 1 of app store monetization was Premium games (.99 titles)

Phase 2 is “Free to play” and it’s RULING the app store.

Phase 2 of the App Store:  The fall of angry birds

Angry Birds currently doesn’t have ANY of it’s games in the top 50 grossing iPhone charts.  The closest is the original title at #52:
http://www.treysmithblog.com/the-fall-of-angry-birds/

Online Gaming Audience Defies Stereotypes

emarketer reporting: 
Audience demographics shift as new gaming possibilities open up in social and mobile

The online gaming space is an exciting place for both gamers and brand marketers. In particular, the growing appeal of casual and social games is encouraging users to play them across multiple platforms, from PCs and consoles to smartphones and tablets. And that appeal is growing beyond the typical gamer demographics.
“Gone are the days when only males ages 18 to 34 were hardcore gamers or only moms were pelting their Facebook friends with requests for hens or heifers in social games like FarmVille,” said Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Online Gaming Audience: Lines Blur as the Market Grows.” “Today’s core gamers are also playing casual games. More women are using game consoles beyond the Nintendo Wii, and their game choices include many genres.”
eMarketer estimates that social gaming will reach 61.9 million US internet users by the end of this year, or over a quarter of the online population. Growth, which is beginning to level out after strong increases, will be driven by the rise of mobile social gaming.The audience for all types of mobile games (excluding pre-installed games on feature phones) is even greater, and growing more rapidly. This year, 73.5 million mobile users will play games at least monthly, up 22.1%. By 2015, more than 100 million US consumers will play games regularly on their phone.http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008565

Publishers need to diversify and compete head-on with other media

The Bookseller.com reporting
Publishers need to diversify and compete head-on with other media in order to deflect the 'one-screen' effect of tablet devices, a panel discussion at the World e-Reading Congress declared.
The session sought to answer the question: "Can e-reading win the war against Angry Birds?" Jonathan Glasspool, managing director of Bloomsbury Academic and Professional, said the battle had already been lost. "Sales of book content have stayed static over the past few years. But if we have lost it, what can we do about it?" Glasspool's answer was that publishers should diversify their earning streams away from the volatile world of bestsellers, towards the exploitation of Intellectual Property (IP) and that they should think of themselves as being in the service business. He said: "Increasingly we make money not through book publishing, but through exploiting IP and helping other people exploit it."
...Sara Lloyd, digital director at Pan Macmillan, said she did not feel gloomy at all, and questioned whether they were simply addressing the wrong question. Lloyd said: "Publishers have been really good at evolving, we just been constrained by book covers, but we can now evolve further, the only difference now is that we won't always make things that look like books."
http://www.thebookseller.com/news/publishers-losing-battle-against-angry-birds.html