How is the Mobile Market?

Don't assume things - I have no problems with better quality anywhere.
What I try to tell you is that people who have money to spend are rarely interested in spending it on a better game - they are interested in spending it for getting more money back, because that is the reason why they have the money to spend.

Direct fees to spend for selling games are OK, that will get people who have no resources out. Requiring money indirectly to fake quality that is not there (purchasing reviews and downloads), especially if that money is more than the average indie developer can really spend (creating a paywall for only the big companies).

And if you think that more money means more quality, you probably never heard of the case that was called "the worst game in history":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)
They spend 20 millions to get the licence and then considered that they could make the game in a few weeks for a 200.000$ and still get a game good enough to earn them their 20M$ back...

OK, that was the most extreme case ever - but the game history is littered with similiar games where the top managers thought they should spend most of the budget on licence and advertisement and shorted the part of the game development cost. It's the same with "early access" and "public betas" - there was a time when it was normal that a game was completely tested and developed before it was sold, but that requires to put real money into game development and wait for the results.
Today a lot of the big companies only care for cheap cash-cows that cost less in development, or why do you think that a lot of good new titles come from small indies that can't pay for good graphics or advertisement?
And those would be thrown out of the market if the paywall for getting the games known rises too much.
And that is the problem with purchasing downloads to get even a tiny step into sales - it will create restrictions that are nothing for the big companies (who are mostly interested in profit) but are a big problem for the medium-sized indies (that get most of the quality games out).

it isn't even an assumption you're missing something in what you've quoted.

YOU may not like the degree of quality that others are profiting from but its still a working strategy.

degree of quality is talking about a range of quality specifically the degree of quality which is profitable which I believe you have been saying the quality of the games is low but what I'm saying is the low quality games are still making money.

the second thing you're missing is Im not trying to say that you will always get a better product if you add more money if that were the case none of us would have a chance in business the rich would literally be the only ones capable of creating the best quality. but this IS somewhat true in that getting things done and having them done well involves having people with experience do the job. money is a tool to be used and is only beneficial when that tool is used properly such as making good investment decisions and I dont just mean buying stocks/bonds. leveraging talent means recognizing where your money would be the most effective in improving the quality of the product. in house remodeling for example people put attention in kitchens and bathrooms because thats what sells houses. but just knowing they sell houses isnt enough. you need to pick desirable materials and have them installed by quality craftsmen. here is a case where money CAN improve quality but if you hire any idiot to do the job and you buy out of the discount bin for cabinets or countertops you can make the house harder to sell. installing a brick wall where the door was would be spending money but you can pretty much guess what that would do to profit.

I think what you're misunderstanding is these platforms which are selling games are interested in their percentage. its not about making the best game its about selling the most games and if the CPI promoted garbage is making them money thats all that matters. same to those generating the garbage content. quality really isnt top concern its profit. try to remember you're mixing oil and vinegar when you try to profit from a hobby. a good example is restoring an old car.. lots of people enjoy it and do it because they can.. so when they decide to sell it so are so many other people who enjoyed it.. and suddenly there is little to no profit in it.

that isnt to say that flipping cars isnt profitable only you have to enter with the mindset of it being a flip. further still that doesnt mean you buy the cheapest materials to go for maximum profit either you have to play every game by its own dynamic rules but what im saying is there are lots of situations inside of lots of different businesses and mixing doing what you enjoy with doing something for profit.. doesnt really work out.

Unless you are well funded, I think you have to proceed and gear up drive your own sales in the app stores by bootstrapping it. When I say by bootstrapping it, I mean you have to do a lot of different things to try and push awareness of your mobile game and build excitement so as not to solely rely on the number of downloads and the promotion of the game within the app stores themselves. Our game didn't hit the app stores yet, but I can tell you what we did because it got us in the press and it got us a small pile of investor cash so we are definitely doing something that works in the hype department.

@bgillisp is correct with his sales stat, but that's the average across all the games I believe. If you are building something unique and if you are fiendishly and obsessively going to bring it to market, then I don't put a whole lot of weight in average statistics because when you are all in, you will do whatever you need to in order to get sales and make a good game.

If your game is good enough, and you can build the required hype and public awareness, your game could do well above average even if it comes out of the gate without much fanfare. Ideally you want it to launch with great reviews and major hype out of the gate, but this is not always realistic, so having all these other marketing resources in place will be helpful regardless.

This is what we are doing or have done:

1) Come up with a platform or some unique feature that nobody has. Ours was geo-based and time based content and we built a platform that serves up that functionality to our game. But it can be simpler than that. It just needs to be some kind of unique hook. If you can design an argument around the hook that the hook is unique enough to generate revenue, that would also be helpful.

2) Hype the game and the hook on social media, reach out to incubators, and local investor & development resources in your local community. Your local community is going to be your greatest asset, especially if the hook is unique enough. You will be able to get an incubator to assist you, and local or regional media and press involved to spotlight it. Also reach out to your schools you graduated from, they often can help get your game and the related hook in the media and also spread awareness.

3) This will put your game out there so that sales do not necessarily reliant on the app stores to promote it.

4) Get some influencers to review and hype your game, build a website that showcases it, and do everything you can outside the app stores to promote and market it. Social media and web presence should be big. Then when the game is done, you can point to those external resources as you run around and further advertise, showcase, and hype it.

I'll be happy to share more insight with you with respect to what we did and what we are doing. I think if you can make a game with the right combination of things, it could sell quite well. It cannot simply be a good game, it has to have some other things to it. I think an average game plus some unique extras will make it sell better than being a really good game with nothing else. The gaming market is not a single customer base.

There are a whole bunch of different types of people who play games. Understanding the market and who these people are, what moves them to purchase, what games they play, and how they define a good game is critically important.

I've done this research, and I have found that there are some unique demographics of gamers who are not the type of gamers people usually thing of when they hear the word "gamer". Those different markets of game purchasers are what led me to the pathway I am on with my game.

Find out who your target markets are and make your game so it meets their needs.

Don't worry about the bigger companies who buy reviews and pay for likes and clicks. They will always have the big cash to do that and you will never have that amount of cash, so do your promotion organically, and get people to know about your game outside of the app stores. You want them opening up the app store and going in there specifically to buy your game, that they found out about somewhere else. As long as the reviews are decent and not bad, they already made up their mind so there is nothing to stop them unless it has all or majority bad reviews. If you take pride in your work, that won't happen.

Thats what I am doing, and I believe it 100%. I am banking my game on that model. So I'n my opinion and based on everything I've researched and done to date, I would recommend the pathway I described above.

Plus there is the fact that many mobile games just shove their game out there and never market it at all. I'm sure the games like Plant vs Zombie I mentioned elsewhere didn't try to market that game at all, and instead just tried to see who they can catch of those looking for the game Plants vs Zombies. And people who do things like that are bring the average down more than likely too.

Overall, @ACECORP is right. You need to figure out your audience, and market the game to that audience. That's what I've been trying to do with my game too, though we will find out in the end if it works.

RPGs are awesome but because of their length they don't mesh well with mobile...
Not saying RPGs do not do well but it's not the best market for them. Look at the app store, what sells is fast quick pick me up games.
Some games do have a story but the actual game play is again fast and a pick me up style.

So if you're looking to do a console 16/32bit era rpg for the mobile market please rethink this, plus you'll need to include purchasable items(with real world $$$), DLC, etc to keep the game going otherwise it won't last on the app store.

I've tried releasing a demo for my MV game on mobile, but it didn't work out

... and which is also part of the storm to come which almost killed our craft had it not been for a page off the Barbie book (the Famicom era) and guided interactive adventures (the Monkey Island effect). And an embarrassing incident so bad that it literally got steamrolled into the ground (theoretically at first but eventually it was totally confirmed).

Bottom line is this: you don't want to short sell yourself and not have enough time for a proper Debug/QA. And you probably don't want to have a bull**** concept either unless it's ridiculous to a certifiable degree that is totally market friendly (something involving genre comedy or nerd humor for instance - or it could be something outlandish compared to the competition - and both concepts actually do have successful examples). Which in the latter example brings me to another idea I have regarding game design thanks to the infamous "advisory mode" that locks difficulty, pesters you with jokes about proper market support and intentionally crashes to bootstrap following a total data wipe during the endgame. Obviously this part is a separate matter to itself so a how-to discussion is yet to come in due time.

well that was encouraging xD