When the iPhone 15 (and the higher-tier models) was revealed last year, it was promised that a slew of AAA games would wind up on the super-capable device and the topmost iPad models. To that end, Death Stranding, Resident Evil Village, and – most recently – Assassin’s Creed Mirage all landed on the iOS App Store, but recent estimations have suggested that they’re simply not selling and might not be worth the developers’ investment.
Too Niche
It’s worth stressing that these AAA games can only be played on the most expensive, high-spec iPhones and iPads on the market, but even so, the estimated sales figures are woeful. In a report published by Appfigures (and shared by MobileGamer), it was suggested that fewer than 3,000 people have paid to unlock the full version of Assassin’s Creed Mirage since it was released a few weeks ago.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage offers users a brief free trial to test out the game on their iPhone or iPad device, but after that, there’s a $49.99 paywall blocking off the rest of the game. That’s where most users are getting to before ultimately giving up, because it has been downloaded approximately 123,000 times, according to Appfigures. That has led Ubisoft to net just $138,000 in revenue, which hardly makes the venture worthwhile.
Elsewhere, it was estimated that while Resident Evil 4 has been downloaded around 350,000 times, only 7,000 consumers have converted to the fully-priced, premium product. The data also shows rapid drop-offs in interest post-launch.
Many have theorised that the leading cause of this lack of interest can be attributed to none of the games being made-for-mobile – and then there’s the fact that they boast premium price tags. In a world dominated by free-to-play games, who wants to pay $49.99 to play a game on a mobile device?
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Imagine giving apple more of your money just so you can play death stranding on your phone. Who was asking for that? Apple cultists aren’t trained for that. Now if they released a small chunk of plastic covered in weak glass that played triple a games and could only use a likely clunky proprietary controller? They’d pay $800 for that.