I think we understand that you're not asking for business advice, but what we're telling you in response is two things: firstly, that there are intangibles that simple dollar terms don't account for, and secondly that the limited information you are asking for doesn't actually inform your decision, despite the fact that it answers your question. In short, you aren't asking the right question to derive an answer that actually helps you achieve your intent of, presumably, being more profitable than not.

Usually when someone rejects such an answer, its because they are looking for a question who's answer backs up their own preconception of what the answer is or should be. In this case, the answer to the question you're asking is actually irrelevant to your intent. Every game is different, every genre is different, every way of monetizing your game is different.

Its like trying to decide on which side of the street to build a new store by polling a few stores to see which is most profitable and on which side of the street they're built. There might be a coincidental trend among those you poll, but its not evidence of a larger trend -- trends have to be large (e.g. statistically-relevent) in order for you to predict them, rather than relying on a sort of superstition. This also fails to ask the right questions -- when locating a store site you need to ask "Which street here is the main thoroughfare?", "What's the local competition", "what other, non-competing stores anchor the area?", "What's the local population and their median income?", "Is the local economy growing or shrinking?" -- what side of the street a store is on, or how much money they made in isolation, doesn't matter two wits without other context.

If you've already developed the other context in your business planning, then you should have identified how much money you need to make on a Windows port to be worthwhile, and the question is not how much money Window's might make relative to other platforms, but whether or not you can match or exceed that figure, quantitatively.

I don't have any preconceptions. I don't understand what is so hard to understand about my question. I am looking for information on how games are doing on the Windows Mobile platform compared to the other platforms. How complicated is that to understand? It does not have to be revenue based, it can be total installs or whatever. Anything that shows a ratio of installs/revenue/plays anything on one platform vs another platform for the same game.

Maybe this graph on Humble Bundle makes it easier to understand. If you scroll down a bit you can see a pie chart of the user base on Windows, Mac and Linux. That is the kind of information I am looking for, but for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. (Primary Windows Phone)

https://www.humblebundle.com/weekly

Anything that shows a ratio of installs/revenue/plays anything on one platform vs another platform for the same game.

And again, you can't generalize from that, except for the obvious.

Games that are popular and recognizable (like say, angry birds) will asymptotically approach numbers that will fall roughly in line with what the current market-share split between OS platforms. A popular game is equally popular on all platforms on a per-capita basis.

Games that are not popular or widely recognizable fall literally anywhere on the spectrum -- generally they are equally *unpopular* on all platforms, but its possible that they could be be a break-away hit on the platforms that have less competition just because there are fewer options.

Anecdotally, you would expect to do no worse on Windows Phone per-capita than on any other platform because its the least-saturated market, but no amount of data will tell you what the likelihood of breaking away on that platform is for your particular game. Given that, you can sort of predict your likely (but not guaranteed) minimum revenue or install-base using Windows phone market-share relative to other platforms, but again it won't predict an upper-bound.

It depends on what regions you consider (which would be reflected by what languages you localize for), but current market-share split is roughly 70/20/10 between Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone. Take that with a grain of salt because those numbers aren't split out to distinguish older WinPhone 7 or android devices, and don't incorporate iPods, but at least you can see that we're talking factors of magnitude, rather than orders. The market potential of iOS is probably between 2.5 and 5 times that of Windows Phone and Android between 5 and 7 times that of Windows Phone (and roughly 2x that of iOS).

Even that's an incomplete picture though -- iOS devices tend to skew towards those with more disposable income, and towards western user bases. There's a lot of cheap android phones in less-developed geographies.

I am looking for information on how games are doing on the Windows Mobile platform compared to the other platforms. How complicated is that to understand?

It is hard to understand because it doesn't make sense.

Let's apply it to some other products and markets, so we can see it not make sense in those fields as well.

* How well are automobile sales going in Van Nuys, California, USA, compared to Campbelltown, NSW, Australia?

* How well are t-shirt sales going in London, UK, compared to Los Angeles, USA?

* How well are cell phone sales going in Johannesburg SA doing relative to Bogota, Colombia?

* How well are beer sales going in Dublin Ireland relative to Provo, Utah, the 'most sober' city in the US?

While you can find an answer for a specific number, such as the per-capita sales of Honda Accord, or the sales ratio for JC Penny catalog, or the number of Nokia devices that still function, these numbers are virtually useless as an independent metric.

Maybe this graph on Humble Bundle makes it easier to understand. If you scroll down a bit you can see a pie chart of the user base on Windows, Mac and Linux. That is the kind of information I am looking for, but for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. (Primary Windows Phone)

That has nothing to do with game sales, and everything to do with the distribution levels of the OS.

Open up their graph, and in another window open Wikipedia's frequently updated usage share of operating systems. Note that the total paid by platform on the indie bundle is very nearly identical to the ratios of the platform. In other words, people on every platform are buying it almost equally.

For a popular game that is exactly what the marks will look like. Perhaps 10% of all people owning the devices will buy it, so your distribution will almost exactly match the distribution of the operating systems. No surprise.

Most games will have very little distribution. Very few people on any platform will buy them. Consequently it will still match the distribution of the operating systems. Nobody is buying it equally on all the platforms. Again, no surprise.

Then when you start porting between machines, usually one platform will be considered the lead platform and the other platforms secondary. The lead platform will (again, with nobody being surprised) typically have a higher distribution than the lesser platforms.

It has nothing to do with the platform, and everything to do with the implementation details of the game.

Taking advantage of St. Patrick's Day today.... Sales of T-shirts printed with "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" are going to be very different in Dublin Ireland relative to their sales in New York City, USA, and the difference in sales has nothing to do with the kind of cotton used in the shirt.

The metric you have chosen has no intrinsic value. It is the wrong metric. No amount of understanding it will make it suddenly have value.

It is asking the wrong kind of question.

There are many other questions out there that would be so much better: What is the market distribution? What is the approximate number of 16-24 year old males owning a windows phone? What percentage of Windows Phone owners download one game in this genre every month? Among those in a specific demographic on a specific game, how many people used IAP to complete a transaction, and how much money did they spend? These are very different questions that do make sense, with answers that can be used to evaluate the business case. They are also answers businesses keep very secret and that market research companies charge for.

While these points about generalisations being difficult are valid, I kind of side with the OP here. It's perfectly true that it may vary a lot between games how their downloads and revenue split between platforms but it can still set some useful upper/lower boundaries. e.g if it varies massively but no game you can find makes more than 20% of its revenue on WP, that's useful information.

On the other hand OP, the fact people aren't giving you pure data isn't because they can't understand you, it's because they don't have the data. You can choose to ignore what they do tell you, arguing with them about it isn't helpful.