Monument Valley 2 proves that premium games can still be hugely successful

It's hard to believe that it's been a year since Monument Valley 2 snuck out on iOS. Whilst free to play mobile games have proven to be immensely profitable in the long run if they're correctly set up, premium games aren't dead yet as ustwo shows us.

Over on Medium last night, ustwo published an article detailing how the first year of Monument Valley 2 compared to that of the game's predecessor. We knew it was coming at the time, but when MV2 dropped during Apple's WWDC 2017 keynote (against a revamped App Store) people were practically raving.

While we had no doubts it'd do well the official figures are seriously impressive. In just a year, the game received over 3-million official sales, pulling in over $10-million, 30-million device installs, and a highest one-day revenue of $728,000. I mean, that's just nuts and it practically doubled what Monument Valley made in its first year.

Moving further into it, the figures about Monument Valley 2's development costs are equally as intriguing, with over $2-million and 70 weeks spent in development, 16 core team members, and over $500,000 spent on marketing.

Of course, as ustwo acknowledges in its post, "Monument Valley is a bit of a unicorn in this space with regards to how well it's performed over the years (succeeding on a level we could never have expected or predicted) but we hope this latest set of data might help others to set a yard stick for something towards the top end of profitability."

It might be a bit intimidating for new indie developers or those wanting to make your mark in the business, but I love this type of transparency. It's the perfect way to give upcoming and enthusiastic devs something to measure up against whilst also keeping expectations from flying off into the sun.