Game Marketing question : How to estimate sales?

For estimate mobile game's sales, how?

If one game's download number is 10000, paying user is 5%, arpu is 20$,

then 10000 * 5% * $20 = $10000? is this sales of one month? or?

I need to estimate and write down my game's estimate sales volume to ppt document...

 

Best indicator of future sales is past sales. How did your last app do? And the one before that. Sales forecasts are essentially guesses of the future based on the past. It's still a guess, and can be widely inaccurate.

If this is your first app then sales will probably be in the region of hundreds, rather then tens of thousands.

 

My past games are not related. This is new game not yet made, and

I am just curious about ARPU and ARPPU's calculation method when submit sales estimate to others.

If both terms's period is for example, one month, (Is this right?) then what is average RPG mobile game's ARPU and ARPPU? or is it values of 6 months or even 1 year? or case by case it is differently used for different period?

 

No, that would be ARPPU, since you are basing it on paying players.
If you made 10k, and you had 10k users your ARPU would be $1
If you made 10k, and you had 500 paying players (5% of 10k), your ARPPU would be $20

Typically ARPU is monthly. (unless otherwise stated). For example, your ARPU would be your monthly Revenue / MAU (monthly active users). ARPPU is basically the same, but instead of dividing by all users, you only use paying users. Downloads aren't typically used to calculate ARPU, unless you are talking about a premium game. (a one time pay vs micro-transactions), in that case your ARPU is your downloads. Then of course there is ARPDAU which is specifically per user, per day (Revenue / DAU).

The best (and most common) way to estimate these values (before building/launching) is to look at your direct competitor's numbers in the same space. ARPU/ARPDAU/ARPPU can vary dramatically depending on the genre/game/model. And they can mean different things depending on the game and its performance.
For example: Puzzles & Dragons has a crazy high ARPU (a bit over $11), and Candy Crush is only $.75 (which is still very, very high). However, P&D makes about 30k a day, Candy Crush makes about a million. Clash does about 1.7mil with a $1.30 ARPU.
So P&D has very few players, and little growth, but the players it does have pay a lot. CandyCrush has a ton of players, and a large percent pay small amounts. Clash has about the same amount of players as CandyCrush, but fewer paying, but paying more. It really depends on the model.

An ARPU of $20 would be record breaking. $20 ARPPU is in the ballpark for a top 10 RPG/RTS. The most common numbers that are used for estimates/planing are DAU and daily revenue (often just weekday). The other numbers are typically used for health/performance monitoring and planning when live.

 

@zombiegorilla
Thanks much for long post.

So in case of free download & in-app-purchase model,
and if presume game user's paying tendency is similar with Clash of Clans,

If that game achieve 100,000 downloads in a month, that month's sales is $130,000? because ARPU is $1.3?

 

Well.. kind of.
Installs(downloads) isn't always 1:1 for users. Quite often with free games, people download and never play. And sometimes a "user" may be conditional. For example we may count a user as someone who has completed the tutorial, or someone who has returned at least once. At the bear minimum, a user will be someone who as actually played the game.

Also a minor distinction, revenue isn't because of the ARPU, the ARPU is because of the revenue. But essentially, yes. If you have a 100k people play in a month, and you made 130k, your ARPU would be $1.3.

But a word of caution here. Those numbers are based on top grossing games. Retention/ARPDAU/ARPU/ect is essentially a curve for F2P games, especially with RPG/RTS. The more active (engaged) players you have increases the percentage of payers, and amount. It is highly unlikely that a (non-premium) game getting a 100k installs in a month is going to be getting anywhere close 1.3 ARPU. (GoW is at about $5 ARPDAU right now, but they are heavily marketing). Clash is probably getting 400k installs a day with probably 8-900k active users a day (combined). What happens is the big games that have huge numbers and are stable, are more attractive to the players willing to pay. It can happen, but not very common.

Its not a safe bet to base numbers on a game like clash, it is extremely uncommon, even in its category. If you are thinking about a 100k MAU, it might looking at what games in that range are making.

 

Really you cant estimate sales of a future game, this is the same that estimate the possible success of the game.