Fellow developers, it’s myth busting time!
In our #FactOrFiction weekly blog series, we’ll take one prevalent myth in the mobile gaming world, and separate fact from fiction. Got a myth that needs some busting? Tweet it to us or post it on our FB page and we’ll have our experts look at it!
This week, we take a peek into the increasingly popular trend of launching app trailers
All successful games launch their trailers before the game launch
With PlayStore and AppStore now supporting app trailers, app developers have an amazing new way to showcase their app through videos. Game trailers may showcase your gameplay screencasts with promotional messages, or simply your game in action, and do everything that screenshots fail to capture. But there is a popular belief that trailers are usually launched way in advance, to build hype ahead of the big launch. Let’s find out how true that is.
We analysed 25 games that made it to the top of the gaming charts on Android and Google, and studied the correlation between the game and the trailer launch timelines. Here is what we found:
Conclusion
Definitely fiction! Majority of the game trailers were observed to be launched along with the game itself. Only big game houses with sufficient resources in place, released the game trailer in addition to other pieces of information ahead of the launch, in order to build hype and general interest in the market for the game.
Having said that, launching an app trailer early on can definitely not hurt. In fact, if you already have a popular game which has a large and loyal user base, launching an app trailer giving a sneak preview of what you have up your sleeve, can help keep users excited and waiting for your new game. But if you don’t have the time or the resources, don’t fret about it too much, as data tells us that developers who have timed their trailer launches to coincide with the app launch didn’t fare too badly!
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