Mobile
In-game purchases
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Xsolla’s latest report reveals what more than 800 mobile Web Shops say about direct-to-consumer
September 24, 2026•4 min
Mobile direct-to-consumer is no longer an experiment. Xsolla has released The Xsolla Report, drawing on data from more than 800 live mobile Web Shops. It shows how direct-to-consumer has shifted from an early way for studios to improve margins to a core commercial strategy in its own right. As regulatory changes open up digital marketplaces and studios look for more control over their player relationships, the report makes the case that the question is no longer whether D2C works in mobile, but how well a studio runs it.
With regulation opening up app stores across the US, EU, Japan, and Brazil, studios now have more freedom to sell directly, and the report focuses on what the best of them are doing with it. The report analyzes Xsolla's very own Web Shop data alongside public market data and the regulatory shifts reshaping mobile D2C.
The gap between an average and a top Web Shop
One of the report's clearest findings is how much room most web shops have to grow. Across every genre and studio size, the distance between a typical Web Shop and a top-performing one runs into many multiples, and it has almost nothing to do with how big the studio is. Indie teams reach the top of the distribution just as often as enterprise publishers, which means the best results are far more reachable than most studios assume. The report shows what the top-performing shops are achieving, and how much room most shops still have to get there.
What separates top-performing mobile D2C Web Shops
So what actually makes a Web Shop perform? It would be easy to assume the answer is scale, with the biggest studios and budgets running the best stores, but the report's findings suggest studio size has very little to do with it. The Web Shops performing best on engagement and Capture Rate share a different trait: they run multiple engagement mechanics as a core part of how the business is planned, rather than switching features on and leaving them.
The data also lands on the single most important moment in the whole funnel, the second purchase. Players who buy twice go on to generate almost all of a Web Shop's revenue, so earning that return visit matters more than almost anything else a studio can do.
A view across genres, channels, and mobile D2C markets
Beyond the headline findings, the report breaks down how the playbook changes by genre, how the Buy Button widens the funnel by reaching players who would never have gone looking for a Web Shop, and what the studios that improve year after year have in common. It closes with a market-by-market look at how the regulatory picture is opening up across the EU, Japan, Brazil, the US, and South Korea, and a set of predictions from Xsolla's product leadership on where mobile D2C is heading next.
"For years, the debate was whether direct-to-consumer really worked in mobile, and that question is now settled," said Nate Ahearn, VP of Product Marketing at Xsolla. "What the data shows is that the studios seeing the best results aren't the biggest ones. They're the ones treating their Web Shop as something to operate and improve over time, rather than something you switch on and leave."
"The 30% platform fee made sense when the app stores were delivering discovery to millions of players," said Jon Motz, VP of Products for Web Shop at Xsolla. "That value exchange has shifted, and studios are realizing the direct relationship with their players is something they can own and build on. The winners over the next few years will be the ones treating that as core infrastructure rather than a side channel.”
What comes through across every chapter is that D2C rewards the studios who operate it well. The full report goes deeper into all of it, the data, the habits, and the market shifts, and gives any studio serious about D2C a benchmark to measure against and solid evidence of what actually drives results.
Want to read the full report?
The Xsolla Report is available to download now.
What separates top-performing mobile D2C Web Shops
So what actually makes a Web Shop perform? It would be easy to assume the answer is scale, with the biggest studios and budgets running the best stores, but the report's findings suggest studio size has very little to do with it. The Web Shops performing best on engagement and Capture Rate share a different trait: they run multiple engagement mechanics as a core part of how the business is planned, rather than switching features on and leaving them.
The data also lands on the single most important moment in the whole funnel, the second purchase. Players who buy twice go on to generate almost all of a Web Shop's revenue, so earning that return visit matters more than almost anything else a studio can do.
A view across genres, channels, and mobile D2C markets
Beyond the headline findings, the report breaks down how the playbook changes by genre, how the Buy Button widens the funnel by reaching players who would never have gone looking for a Web Shop, and what the studios that improve year after year have in common. It closes with a market-by-market look at how the regulatory picture is opening up across the EU, Japan, Brazil, the US, and South Korea, and a set of predictions from Xsolla's product leadership on where mobile D2C is heading next.
"For years, the debate was whether direct-to-consumer really worked in mobile, and that question is now settled," said Nate Ahearn, VP of Product Marketing at Xsolla. "What the data shows is that the studios seeing the best results aren't the biggest ones. They're the ones treating their Web Shop as something to operate and improve over time, rather than something you switch on and leave."
"The 30% platform fee made sense when the app stores were delivering discovery to millions of players," said Jon Motz, VP of Products for Web Shop at Xsolla. "That value exchange has shifted, and studios are realizing the direct relationship with their players is something they can own and build on. The winners over the next few years will be the ones treating that as core infrastructure rather than a side channel.”
What comes through across every chapter is that D2C rewards the studios who operate it well. The full report goes deeper into all of it, the data, the habits, and the market shifts, and gives any studio serious about D2C a benchmark to measure against and solid evidence of what actually drives results.
Want to read the full report?
The Xsolla Report is available to download now.Featured articles
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