Today, PapayaMobile, the social gaming network for Android, is announcing a new milestone: it has topped 25 million users, which represents over 940% growth since the beginning of last year. The company attributes the increase to both the growing demand for mobile social games as well as the rapidly expanding Android install base worldwide.
Papaya also released several other network statistics along with the user milestone figure, including the following:
- More than 11 million paid transactions have occurred using Papaya’s virtual currency.
- ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) on the Papaya network is $22.60/month.
- ARPPU across all Papaya Game Engine games is more than $10.00 per month.
- On average, 1 in 5 users purchase Papaya’s virtual currency in social games that use Papaya’s Game Engine.
- Popular titles earn on average over $20,000/month.
- The most spent by a single user on the Papaya network is $4,440. <– Who is this crazy person?!
- 93 million pMails have been sent to users across the Papaya network.
- Users have engaged in over 874 million game sessions.
- Regionally, the fastest growing market for Papaya is China which has experienced over 500% growth since January 2011. Europe is close behind at 224% and then the United States at 222%.
The company showcased a few of its top-performing applications on the network, too, like Treasure Fever which sees a monthly ARPPU of $10.33, and X-City, whose ARPPU is $9.17.
Both of these apps use Papaya’s Game Engine technology, which makes it easier to build social titles in a matter of weeks, the company says.
Papaya’s Sharp Words for Mobage
In addition, Papaya’s Head of Developer Relations, Paul Chen, provided his take on the recent Mobage deal from DeNA and ngmoco, which translated the popular Japanese mobile social gaming platform for Android into English and Chinese.
Says Chen, after analyzing a sampling of Mobage games:
“There is little market traction for these apps four weeks after launch. This is especially surprising considering the original versions of these titles were huge hits with millions of downloads on either iOS and/or Android. Much of the reason for the initial lack of traffic to the Mobage network stems from the fact that, in order to play a Mobage game, you not only have to download the game, but also the Mobage SNS application. This is creating a significant barrier to adoption for the Mobage platform as users do not wish to download two applications to play one game.”
Except for Pocket Frogs (10,000-50,000 installs) and We Rule (5,000-10,000 installs), the apps Chen examined (Paper Toss, Ninja Royale, Haypi Kingdom and Paradise Island) all have 1,000 to 5,000 installs. In total, Mobage has 25 games running on ngCore, its Game Engine product.
At the time of Mobage’s launch in July, DeNA/ngmoco said that it would release more titles, a Mobage iOS version and expand Mobage Global to more markets. Clearly there is some rivalry here, given each company’s focus on the mobile social gaming space.