I told you that freemium games generate more money for developers than paid games, and everything lies in the fact that freemium games can be downloaded for free, but they allow the purchase of virtual objects through in-app purchases. There are a multitude of games that allow this, and those at Flurry have analyzed over 57 million downloads made by users from all over the world to discover what gamers spend their money on. It seems that in games gamers spend the most money on consumable items and not on durable items. For example, users buy bullets, fertilizer, seeds for various games and do not buy virtual objects that are not consumed after one or more uses.
The chart shows that over two-thirds of all items purchased in iOS and Android freemium games are consumable, goods that users deplete. Measured another way, approximately half of all real dollars spent within all apps are for game items consumers don't keep. Based on our data, the most popular virtual purchase, consumable or otherwise, is for "premium" in-game currency. Premium currency can be spent in a number of ways to accelerate progression in a given game, including converting it into "grind" currency, the primary currency that consumers accrue and use through normal gameplay (aka the "grind"). Premium currency, which also allows consumers to purchase special items that cannot typically be acquired with regular "grind" currency, is said to "alleviate the grind" (ie, allow a user to advance faster in a game). Games that are designed with consumable items in mind tend to monetize very well. For developers, this offers the best ROI on game development resources.
Although we are talking about virtual goods that cannot be turned into money, users spend real money to buy them and developers earn very well from this business. Infinity Blade, Pocket God, 9mm and many many other games allow users to buy various objects through in-app purchases, and a good part of these objects are consumed after the first or second use, so they become useless. In the image above, we also have the ratio between consumables, durables and personalization goods, and notice that consumables are by far the most purchased.
In a few years all applications will be free and we will have to pay in-game to have all the functions.
