What should the real App Store best-selling list look like?

Looking back to a year ago, we were always talking about the issue of “list solidification”.

Can I still see the current iOS best-selling list? This is a problem that troubles many game practitioners. The current list is representative to a certain extent, but at the same time it cannot truly reflect the industry trends because there are too many waters and tricks. Many new games with a little fame from medium and large game manufacturers can rush to the top of the best-selling list as soon as they are launched. There are many new games launched recently, and the list is even more chaotic. What kind of information is revealed behind the frequent changes in the rankings? What should a real best-selling list look like? What industry trends does the list reflect?

Looking at the trends from the rankings of various countries - the solidification of the rankings is the norm

Mobile games have been developed for many years, and after a long period of sedimentation, some top products have established barriers. Under normal circumstances, the top products in the market are often those that rank at the top of the best-selling list. These games have a certain user base, sufficient revenue-generating capabilities, and the strength to operate in the long term. Therefore, they are naturally at the top of the list.

"List solidification" is a normal phenomenon in the development of mobile games. Top products will occupy users' time and money for a long time, which will make it difficult for the remaining mobile games to break through, let alone grab a share of the top best-selling list. Therefore, when the competition and development in the mobile game industry reaches a certain stage, the ranking list will become relatively solidified. Even if the next new trend of user preferences emerges, top products will soon gain a foothold in the forefront and stabilize the situation.

Looking back to a year ago, the TOP 10 best-selling list was basically dominated by Tencent and NetEase, including " Fantasy Westward Journey " mobile game, " Honor of Kings ", " Westward Journey Online " mobile game, "Legend of Mir 2", "Naruto" and so on. These top products that have been online for more than half a year have basically firmly occupied their rightful positions.

Foreign rankings are also in the process of "solidification":

United States: Among the top 20 best-selling models, 15 have been online for more than one year, 11 have been online for more than two years, 7 have been online for more than three years, 5 have been online for more than four years, and 2 have been online for more than five years.

Japan: Among the top 20 best-selling products, 15 have been online for more than one year, 11 have been online for more than two years, 6 have been online for more than three years, and 2 have been online for more than four years.

South Korea: Among the top 20 best-selling products, 11 have been online for more than one year, 9 have been online for more than two years, and 3 have been online for more than three years.

It is not difficult to see from foreign rankings that the solidification of best-selling lists is an inevitable phenomenon that accompanies the evolution of the mobile game industry. At this stage, players' preferences and choices for games are relatively concentrated, and the polarization in the industry is becoming more and more serious, which has led to the solidification phenomenon. But looking at the domestic rankings, it seems that this pattern was suddenly broken at some stage.

Since the second half of last year, the domestic best-selling list has changed unexpectedly frequently.

The frequent changes in the best-selling list began in the second half of last year. At that time, many manufacturers were still worried about the dominance of Tencent and NetEase and the solidification of the list. But not long after, companies, led by some listed gaming companies, saw their products continue to rush to the top of the list. At first, everyone thought that we had entered an era of flourishing and a hundred flowers blooming, but later we found that there was a lot of water and tricks in it.

Taking the current iOS best-selling list as an example, among the TOP20, there are as many as 8 products launched in the past two months, and among the TOP50, there are 19 products launched in the past two months, and many of them have just been launched in the past half month.

As soon as these products go online, they can squeeze out many top-ranked and stable products, and appear in the TOP10 or even the first screen. But what is strange is that these products are not very popular on Baidu, Weibo, and forums. It is difficult to have such a large number of users and payment rates in a short period of time. It makes people suspicious that they rush to the top of the best-selling list as soon as they go online. In addition, the rankings of some new games have fluctuated greatly. Some of them were in the TOP10 yesterday, but fell out of the TOP20 today.

Obviously, the frequent changes in the list are closely related to self-inflation. The cost loss of self-charging has become an acceptable normal investment in the eyes of some manufacturers. However, due to self-charging, a lot of false performance has appeared in the industry. Some products that seem to have made rapid progress in the rankings do not actually have the corresponding "strength" to attract traffic and money, nor do they have the foundation for long-term operations . They have become tools of capital rather than a real game.

Similarly, the current distorted list cannot truly represent industry trends. To obtain the correct information from the list, you have to eliminate some erroneous content and restore the list yourself.

Remove moisture, in fact, the best-selling list is still solidified

After recognizing the reasons for the frequent changes in the list, we will find that these changes are superficial. The best-selling list is not useless, but we need to restore the list manually in a reasonable way.

Among the TOP50, nearly one-third of the products are suspected of self-charging. Together with those games whose rankings have dropped outside the top 50, the number of self-charging products in the mobile game industry is far beyond imagination. Mobile Game Matters checked some new games that have been launched recently, and found from the “popular in-app purchase items” that many games have unreasonable recharge phenomena and patterns.

From the above screenshots, we can see that among the popular in-app purchase items of these products, 648 yuan ranks in the top five, and some products even rank first at 648 yuan, which is contrary to common sense. If we try to remove these games, we can see a list like this: in this list, newly launched mobile games account for a very small proportion, and the performance of old products is strong. Tencent and NetEase are still the leaders of the list, and the list remains solidified.

The patterns of the domestic rankings actually show the same pattern as those in other parts of the world, but the muddy waters that have filled the rankings have disrupted the appearance of the rankings. The fact that game manufacturers who manipulate the charts are willing to bear high costs to self-recharge shows that the capital story in the mobile game industry has not yet been told, the temptation to manipulate the charts is still great, and the industry still needs to be regulated.

The frequent changes in the list confuses everyone's understanding of the industry, and some erroneous information cannot represent the development status and trends of the industry. Although we don’t want to see Tencent and NetEase dominate the list, we are even more unwilling to see a fake list. After all, only by facing the problem can we solve it.

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