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[MrTP]

Dear Game Devs,

Today I would like to give you a brief overview about the current "Game Releases Per Day" situation on the biggest digital distribution platforms:

• Steam
• Apple Appstore
• Google Play Store

The reason why I want to show you these numbers is that I want to raise the awareness of game devs how important it has become, to work on the visibility & presentation of their games to shine out of the mass of new releases per day.


STEAM
Taking a look at the first eight months of 2016, we can see that during this period 2.915 games got released on Steam (please see http://steamspy.com/year/). In other words this means: 12 new game releases per day.

To give you a better insight into the increase of Steam releases per day, here are the numbers of the last years:

• 2015: 2.977 Steam releases overall (approx. 8 releases per day)
• 2014: 1.777 Steam releases overall (approx. 5 releases per day)
• 2013: 565 Steam releases overall (approx. 1-2 releases per day)
• 2012: 381 Steam releases overall (approx. 1 releases per day)

APPLE APPSTORE
Taking a look at the Appstore metrics (http://www.pocketgamer.biz/metrics/app-store/submissions/) we can see these monthly submission numbers - for Game Apps only - for the last eight months:

• 2016-01: 19.265
• 2016-02: 16.126
• 2016-03: 20.105
• 2016-04: 22.642
• 2016-05: 25.255
• 2016-06: 27.032
• 2016-07: 27.848
• 2016-08: 17.830

That means that a game dev who is planning to release his/her game in the Appstore, is in competition with approx. 500-800 other new game apps - PER DAY.


GOOGLE PLAY STORE
Unfortunately I couldn't find any up-to-date information about the current release ratio in the Google Play Store, so I have to use these numbers from a 2015 article, Mike Rose (talent scout at game developer and publisher tinyBuild) wrote for Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/237811/500_games_launched_per_day_on_iOS_last_year_and_other_digital_sales_facts.php):

"Mobile is as tough as ever, being a mature, crowded market. Rose said about 500 games launched every day on iOS in 2014, and 250 a day on Android. "

My two cents: I don't think that 250 releases per day are still a valid number. I guess that - similar to the Appstore release ratio - we have to deal with 500+ game releases per day in the Google Play Store.

BTW: Even if the release ratio isn't accessible, it is possible to see the overall number of apps within the Play Store.
At the moment (September 2016), there are 2.4 million apps available.
Please see: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266210/number-of-available-applications-in-the-google-play-store/

[Superku]

This is interesting, thanks for sharing.
I've always thought the mobile sector was a bad idea to develop for when you don't have a lot to spend on marketing (like you can be successful but it's more or less just a gamble), yet I've never imagined it being THAT bad with so many releases a day.
One small thing to keep in mind is that most of the games on Steam release on Monday through Friday, so the amount of games released a day (not counting Sat/Sunday) is even higher.

[pelle]

Numbers are depressing as they have been for years. I'm surprised the number of people that think they can make a living making games seems to just go up and up?

However it would be interesting to see some kind of qualitative break-down of this. I guess a huge number of games (the majority, by far?) are crappy quick hacks to try to cash in on something, like all the games that have a title and icon that looks a lot like some successful game? And many others are people hoping to make the next Flappy success? I have not tried to publish anything on an appstore, but that I know that have have mostly been doing some very simple games hoping to win the lottery. Not everyone compete for the same market and I am not sure all niche markets are saturated yet (or will be, given that some markets require someone with good experience of that niche, and that they are too niched to get focus from large companies).