DeNA says 'Rage of Bahamut' driving same revenues on Android as iOS

Despite studies indicating applications developed for Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android generate just a fraction of the revenues driven by apps for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, Japanese gaming giant DeNA reports its bestselling Rage of Bahamut is earning comparable daily revenues from both platforms.

"Contrary to what we read, we've been very happy with Android monetization," DeNA Director Neil Young, who heads the firm's ngmoco unit, told TechCrunch. "There is not a big discrepancy between the two now."

A trading card-based social game set in a sword-and-sorcery world, Rage of Bahamut has spent six weeks heading the Google Play storefront's top-grossing apps countdown and claimed the top spot in Apple's App Store earlier this week. While most leading casual games generate average revenues per daily active user between 15 cents and 25 cents, Young said Rage of Bahamut is generating revenues as much as four or five times higher. He declined to specify the title's overall monthly revenues.

DeNA offers more than 1,800 game titles for smartphones and feature phones as well as PCs. In October 2010, DeNA acquired iPhone gaming startup ngmoco for $400 million, indicating plans to integrate its Mobage software with ngmoco's own Plus+ social networking platform. In March 2012, DeNA partnered with The Walt Disney Company to jointly develop mobile social titles slated for rollout across the Mobage platform; the companies also will collaborate on Disney-branded smartphone apps as well as movie and television programming.

Last week, mobile app analytics firm Flurry reported that based on a comparison of bestselling apps across both iOS and Android, iOS installs drive four times greater revenues than Android, consistent with similar findings in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the first quarter of 2012. Sixty-nine percent of new app development projects initiated during the first quarter of 2012 targeted the iOS platform, Flurry adds.

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