62% of all App Store revenue comes from game transactions

62% of all App Store revenue is generated from game transactions, Apple’s antitrust expert Lorin Hitt, a professor of operations, information and decisions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, testified as part of the ongoing Apple vs Epic trial. 

Hitt also highlighted that the median App Store in-game app purchase price doubled from $5 to $10 after a new Fortnite version launched on iOS in 2018, while the average price per paid apps jumped from around $9 to approximately $16.

Hitt also added that between March 2018 and July 2020, 10.2% of Fortnite gamers played on iOS and generated 13.2% of Fortnite revenue, which totaled $745 million out of a total $5.635 billion in game revenue.

On the second day of the antitrust trial, the judge asked the Epic CEO the reason why iPhone users couldn’t purchase V-Bucks through Apple’s Safari browser, instead of Epic rolling out a direct payment system. 

Tim Sweeney accepted that they could have used the feature, however ‘’it wasn’t a very attractive option for our customers,” he said. 

“To set Fortnite aside and pull out some device, browse to a website, log in, make a transaction there, it’s extremely inconvenient.” he added. “There’s a huge amount of payment processing and customer friction associated with selling a user of an app an item outside of that app.”

Lorin Hitt also highlighted the statistics that show Fortnite retained up to 88% of spending after Epic installed the hot fix and Apple removed the game from the App Store in August.

Hitt also criticized Epic’s expert for purportedly excluding free apps from his own App Store average commissions estimate, which hovered around 28%. 

Hitt stated that when free apps are considered in the calculation, the average commissions rate on all App Store transactions is 4.7% and 8.1% on game transactions. 

Phil Schiller said during yesterday’s transaction that only 17% of the apps in the App Store use the same freemium model as Fortnite, and only 6% of them are premium games that require upfront processing. He also said that 75% of all games in the App Store are completely free.