Presented by Xsolla
This year’s Devcom in Gamescom was the place for the latest GamesBeat Live, powered by Xsolla. GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi welcomed Berkley Egenes, chief marketing and growth officer at Xsolla, to discuss opportunities in mobile gaming’s post-DMA era and more.
“Some of the games we see here are pretty incredible. The quality, the fidelity we’ve seen, and the IP being created for mobile games have been tremendous,” Egenes said. “Now it’s full stories, journeys we’re seeing from some of these games.”
And those games are seeing a lot of success with the growing popularity of direct-to-consumer webshops, Takahashi noted.
“I’m surprised by how much awareness there is post-DMA about alternative web shops on mobile,” he said. “People seem to have taken to the notion that they can get better deals, extras, or rewards. That’s what’s enticing them to these stores. It’s a different way of getting your stuff, but you’re getting better stuff.”
Direct to consumer strategy has been top of mind for Xsolla, Egenes said, as they work with developers to determine the best way to reach the players eager to take advantage of an easier way to shop for the game items they’re interested in. For instance, the company recently launched an SDK that lets developers integrate in-game payments via Xsolla Pay Station for both out-of-store distributed game builds (including Android APK and Notarized iOS) and in-store payment processing, supporting Google’s User Choice Billing and Apple’s Alternative Billing options. It also provides access to over 700 global payments.
They demonstrated the power of direct to consumer strategies with partner company Tilting Point, which is currently testing offers for Warhammer.
“They’re seeing transactions that are higher than normal — compared to about $25, they’re seeing hundreds of dollars,” he explained. “The web shop provides the opportunity to do that, to do customized promotions, and to offer value packs. Something creative. The developers are learning what their consumers and players are interested in.”
Players get pinged if they miss a new round of offers, which not only brings them back to the store but also back into the game. He added that this has resulted in longer gameplay and higher daily and monthly active users.
Enabling cross-platform success
As the industry starts to bounce back after two and a half years of layoffs and hiring picks up speed, more games are coming out more frequently. Speed to market and finding new revenue streams are more critical than ever. A cross-platform strategy can be especially successful with the right platform and tools to support it.
The Xsolla Backend solution is a foundation that lets game developers go cross-platform directly out of the gate with no upfront fees. It essentially offloads the hardcore work behind the scenes so that developers can get to market faster, on more platforms, while they focus on what really excites them—the creative parts of making a game.
“Do you want to create a game, or do you want to create a business?” Egenes says. “We have a business opportunity to do that for our developers, provide those tools and services, and help them be successful. We’ve been building it as part of our acquisition with AcceleratXR out of Canada.”
Time to market: just one day
Xsolla Instant Game Sales, Instant Launcher and Instant Cloud Gaming join the Instant Web Shop as a way to speed up time to market for developers. The suite of solutions helps developers launch new monetization avenues and attract new paying players by whittling down time to market to a single day.
Instant Web Shop lets developers swiftly set up a fully operational online store for their mobile games, enabling them to launch a LiveOps monetization system and improve user engagement. With Instant Game Sales, developers can create store pages by importing content from Steam and Epic Game Store to facilitate sales during pre-orders and pre-launch phases, game releases, and seasonal promotions. The Instant Launcher lets developers directly engage with their audience while cross-promoting their games inside one gaming hub, decreasing the average cost per lead.
Stay tuned for the next GamesBeat Live, powered by Xsolla and VB Lab, for more news and announcements in October 2024.
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