Amazon says that its own Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Fire HDX 7 were the best sellers on its website during the weekend that included Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The news comes on the heels of another report showing that the Kindle Fire is the second most popular device for mobile gaming, after the iPad. According to the App Annie & IDC Portable Gaming Report, about 13% of mobile gamers prefer the Kindle Fire, versus about 17% who choose the iPad.
Affordability may be a strong determinant of the devices chosen by mobile gamers, with roughly 25% saying they use an Android smartphone for gaming. Only 5% use an Android tablet. More affluent gamers tend to use iOS devices, and IDC says that during the third quarter iOS generated 3 times as much game revenue as Google Play in the United States.
Mobile games generate more revenue than all other mobile apps combined, according to investment bank Digital Capital. This year the firm projects that mobile apps will generate $24 billion in revenue, with 72% of that going to mobile games. In a sign that non-game apps may be catching up, IDC said that between Q2 and Q3 this year, revenue growth was greater for app categories other than games than it was for the gaming category.
Many games offer players the opportunity to make purchases within the game. The vast majority of these purchases are small, but some popular games are experimenting with big-ticket in-game offerings. Rovio’s Angry Birds created some angry customers recently by offering to sell a virtual car in a game for $100.
