Women are most valuable mobile gamers - DeltaDNA
Analytics firm finds lifetime value of average female player is 44% higher than that of average male player
In the mobile market, women are more valuable customers than men. That's according to analytics firm DeltaDNA, which has released some data points pulled from the games it handles to make its case on the company blog.
Women are apparently more invested in mobile platforms than men to start with, the company said, noting that among Android users, 34% of women use a premium device (costing more than $300) compared to 27% of men. As for iOS, the post noted that 21% of women use an iPhone, compared to 15% of men.
"The net effect of this is seen when looking at their propensity to spend in-game; across all games tracked by deltaDNA, 4.5% of women spend in games, compared to only 3.3% of men," the company said. "This results in a total value of $1.57 for each female player vs. $1.09 for every man, and so we can see, women are effectively worth 44% more than men."
The firm also looked at genre preferences, finding that women are less active in the action and strategy genres (making up 23% and 26% of the player base, respectively), but more likely to play games in the puzzle and casino genres (respectively accounting for 76% and 51% of the audience for those genres)
"This has powerful implications for mobile game publishers," DeltaDNA said. "A female-focused game simply has a much greater chance of being profitable than a male-focused one. Given that women tend to like puzzle and casino games that are also much less expensive to produce and maintain the economics of making male-focused action and strategy games are hard to justify."
The possibilities could also extend to the console space. While most AAA series in consoles target genres preferred by male gamers, DeltaDNA noted that ownership rates for consoles are nearing gender parity.