I have been monitoring the Top Paid Games list on the Windows Phone homepage / Windows Phone Store for more than a year now, as well as on App Annie (which I think just gets its data from the Windows Phone homepage), and I am very dubious about how accurate it is.
For instance, in that year of monitoring, pretty much the same four games have been in the Top 5 Paid Games list the entire time: 1. Plants vs. Zombies, 2. Sonic CD, 3. Cut the Rope Exp, 4. Cut the Rope, and 5. Survival Craft.
I highly doubt those 5 games have really been uninterrupted best sellers for the past year because,
1. they're all old games,
2. there have been some great sales via Red Stripe Deals of the Week on many other better and newer titles during that time period that should've popped in to the list,
3. if there is believed to be a correlation between sales and the number of user ratings a game has, then it seems unlikely that any of those games sold as well as implied (e.g. Sonic CD has only 665 reviews in the U.S. market), and, finally,
4.SurvivalCraft in particular is merely a ripoff of another game that is in the store (Minecraft), a better game with more name cachet that should sell better but apparently is not.
That last point, in particular, is quite perplexing, because Minecraft has dominated the Top Paid Games list on iOS and Android for years now. That it is one of the most popular games of all time and was just released on Windows Phone but a few months ago means that it should be dominating the Top Paid games list on Windows Phone too, like on iOS and Android, yet, according to the Top Paid Games list and App Annie, it is not. What's going on here?
For instance, in that year of monitoring, pretty much the same four games have been in the Top 5 Paid Games list the entire time: 1. Plants vs. Zombies, 2. Sonic CD, 3. Cut the Rope Exp, 4. Cut the Rope, and 5. Survival Craft.
I highly doubt those 5 games have really been uninterrupted best sellers for the past year because,
1. they're all old games,
2. there have been some great sales via Red Stripe Deals of the Week on many other better and newer titles during that time period that should've popped in to the list,
3. if there is believed to be a correlation between sales and the number of user ratings a game has, then it seems unlikely that any of those games sold as well as implied (e.g. Sonic CD has only 665 reviews in the U.S. market), and, finally,
4.SurvivalCraft in particular is merely a ripoff of another game that is in the store (Minecraft), a better game with more name cachet that should sell better but apparently is not.
That last point, in particular, is quite perplexing, because Minecraft has dominated the Top Paid Games list on iOS and Android for years now. That it is one of the most popular games of all time and was just released on Windows Phone but a few months ago means that it should be dominating the Top Paid games list on Windows Phone too, like on iOS and Android, yet, according to the Top Paid Games list and App Annie, it is not. What's going on here?