When Apple unveiled its iPhone 15 Pro last September, it also announced the device would be capable of running some major AAA video games, including the Resident Evil 4 remake and Assassin’s Creed Mirage. While certainly impressive and a great way of drawing attention to the iPhone 15 Pro, I had to wonder how much demand there was for such games to see native mobile ports. Turns out the answer is not a lot.
Recently, Mobilegamer.biz shared an analysis, based on estimates by Appfigures, on the performance of the mobile ports of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Village, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and Death Stranding. To be blunt, it seems not a single one of these games has been profitable on mobile. Resident Evil 4, for example, launched on iOS on December 23, but is estimated to have only made $208,000 from roughly 357,000 unique downloads. For the sake of comparison, the console/PC release pushed three million units in its first two days according to Capcom.
Resident Evil Village, meanwhile, has seen more downloads, but only 370,000 of them. Plus, it’s made even less money, generating an estimated $92,000 in revenue since its October 2023 launch. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, which launched earlier this month, has fared much better already, but it’s still made a shockingly low $138,000 from approximately 123,000 downloads.
All three of these games are technically free-to-play, allowing mobile owners to try out a portion of them before purchasing the full game. The price varies from game to game but, given how low these estimated figures are, it seems not enough people are being convinced to actually put money down for these games after downloading them. The one game that isn’t a free download is Death Stranding, which launched on mobile this past January and costs $20. It’s actually been the most successful of the bunch, making an estimated $212,000 from roughly 10,600 downloads. But that’s hardly cause for celebration when the original PlayStation 4 version is believed to have accrued over three million players in its first six months (via Gamstat), far more than the mobile version has managed in five months.
Mobilegamer.biz does reiterate these figures are only estimates, and also points to more optimistic estimates from data firm Appmagic, but they’re not that much better. For example, Appmagic says Assassin’s Creed Mirage has made roughly $221,000 in revenue, which is still nowhere near the $250 million it’s believed to have made on consoles and PC (per Insider Gaming). At the very least, Ubisoft called Mirage its “biggest New Gen launch,” which it definitely wouldn’t have said had it performed as well as the mobile port has.
In retrospect, these ports were probably doomed from the get-go. As Appmagic head of content Andrei Zubov points out, the top performing mobile games “typically feature simpler controls, prioritise unique art styles over high-end graphics, and are suited for shorter play sessions.” People who frequently game on mobile are thus less likely to be interested in ports of bigger titles. Plus, anyone who would want to play them likely already bought them for console or PC. And if you’re someone who doesn’t own Resident Evil 4 or Death Stranding, why wouldn’t you play them on a platform they were originally designed for than your mobile phone?
Not to mention these ports are, again, only available on the new iPhone 15 Pro. I doubt anyone would consider buying the device just to play the ports, especially since the phone costs $999. This makes it far more expensive than a brand new PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S. Apple still intends to put No Man’s Sky and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows on high-end iPads but, if all this data is anything to go by, I can’t imagine they’ll perform any better, and I’d be shocked if any more AAA console/PC titles get native mobile releases in the future.
