A Top-Grossing iOS Game Like Epic’s Infinity Blade II Can Earn More Than $5 Million a Month
Are paid apps striking back against the big freemium wave of 2011? Epic Games said that its iOS franchise Infinity Blade has earned more than $30 million dollars in one year. The first game in the series, Infinity Blade, has earned $23 million in lifetime and its sequel, Infinity Blade II has earned more than $5 million since its release on December 1, 2011.
While many developers are turning towards the free-to-play model, the recent success of paid titles like Infinity Blade ($6.99) and Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto III ($4.99) have proven that paid apps can still be lucrative — if they’re of high quality and have a loyal audience. And that’s despite the rule of thumb we’ve heard that a paid app will generally see one-tenth of the total downloads a free app will.
We’ve generally heard that a top grossing iOS game can earn around $2 and $3 million dollars a month. But as the size of the iOS market grows with iPad sales and a strong quarter with the new iPhone 4S, so does the potential for monetization. Keep in mind though, that Infinity Blade II is at the very highest end of the earnings spectrum.
By comparison a top grossing Android app now earns about $1 million a month, so while both platforms are seeing growth, there still seems to be a 5:1 earnings ratio between iOS and Android. These figures are roughly in line with the ones that mobile analytics company Flurry released in December showing that for every dollar a developer earns on iOS, they only earn 24 cents on Android.
The original Infinity Blade, developed by Epic-owned studio Chair Entertainment, was the first iOS game to use Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 — a high quality graphics engine that was originally designed to run on consoles like the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3.
The success of Infinity Blade set a new bar for graphics in mobile games. It spawned an entire generation of games for touch devices that borrowed the series’ innovative touch and swipe controls. Infinity Blade II was just nominated for a Game Developer’s Choice Award for best Handheld or Mobile Game.
January 8th, 2012 at 11:11 pm
[...] Via IMA [...]
January 10th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
[...] Entertainment’s parent company Epic Games just revealed the game has already earned more than $5 million since its release, setting a new monthly high-water mark for a top grossing iOS [...]
January 20th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
[...] designed to run on game consoles but has been making inroads into mobile development. Epic’s own Infinity Blade franchise uses the [...]
January 24th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
[...] These numbers underscore a recent trend we’ve been hearing about from multiple research firms — that the latest iPhone has actually helped Apple close the gap with the momentum of Google’s Android platform. It’s also made up for the lull in revenue growth for third-party game developers we saw in the third quarter when we saw top-earning games producing about $3 million per month in revenue. Epic’s Infinity Blade later showed us that a developer could do $5 million per month, probably buoyed by strong holiday sa… [...]
March 18th, 2012 at 1:11 am
[...] no secret that a well done core-focused title can do well on iOS. Epic Games made more than $30 million in revenue from its Infinity Blade series. While those games are paid, Cousins thinks there could [...]
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:00 pm
[...] tremendous affect on the game’s chart position. In January Epic revealed the game had earned $23 million in its first year of [...]
June 29th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
[...] they’re well within the realm of possibility. In December, Epic’s Infinity Blade II earned $5 million in its first month of release. In May, GREE revealed the newly acquired Funzio was earning more [...]
August 9th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
[...] premium paid and in-app purchases can be extremely lucrative. Infinity Blade II was able to earn $5 million in its first month of release, and 60 percent of Gameloft’s smartphone sales now come from [...]
August 10th, 2012 at 11:28 am
[...] franchise had generated more than $30 million in revenue, with Infinity Blade II earning more than $5 million in its first month of release alone, despite being a premium, paid app with a relatively expensive [...]
August 16th, 2012 at 10:54 am
[...] hyped title CSR Racing passed $12 million in monthly revenue. That’s a big jump up from previously reported high water marks like the roughly $5 million or so Infinity Blade apparently pulled in during the very lucrative holiday month of December. The [...]
August 16th, 2012 at 1:43 pm
[...] milyon dolar kazanmıştı ki bu aylık 5,5 milyon doların üzerinde kazanmak anlamına geliyor. Infinity Blade 2 de daha önce aylık 5 milyon dolar kazancı geçen bir başka [...]
August 16th, 2012 at 11:19 pm
[...] milyon dolar kazanmıştı ki bu aylık 5,5 milyon doların üzerinde kazanmak anlamına geliyor. Infinity Blade 2 de daha önce aylık 5 milyon dolar kazancı geçen bir başka [...]
August 19th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
[...] milyon dolar kazanmıştı ki bu aylık 5,5 milyon doların üzerinde kazanmak anlamına geliyor. Infinity Blade 2 de daha önce aylık 5 milyon dolar kazancı geçen bir başka [...]
October 17th, 2012 at 10:04 pm
[...] hyped title CSR Racing passed $12 million in monthly revenue. That’s a large burst adult frompreviously reported high H2O outlines like a roughly $5 million or so Infinity Blade apparently pulled in during a really remunerative holiday month of December. [...]
October 19th, 2012 at 6:00 pm
[...] Blade 2, was able to break iOS sales records after its Dec. 2011 release, earning more than $5 million in a single month, a figure that became a high water mark for iOS earnings for the next several [...]