Big Revenue from “Small” Devices: 5 Insights on Optimising for Low-Tier Mobile Devices to Maximise Audience Reach
The most successful mid-core and AAA mobile games are not the ones that deliver a wow effect through flashy visuals and cutting-edge graphics while pushing hardware to its limits. Instead, they are the ones that strike a balance between quality and accessibility, including support for low and mid-tier devices, which currently account for 67% of revenue* for mobile game developers and publishers.
1. Optimisation Starts at the Production Level, Not at the End
One of the most common misconceptions is that optimisation happens at the later stages of development. In reality, successful projects treat it as part of the production strategy from day one.
At the early stages, teams define memory budgets (CPU and, where necessary, GPU), frame budgets, and establish scalable asset pipelines. Shaders and automation pipelines are prepared to ensure stable real-time performance within the chosen engine. Technical Artists play a key role here, acting as a bridge between art and tech teams and aligning constraints across disciplines.
Engine choice itself becomes a critical factor too, especially for mobile projects. Depending on the type and scale of the game, Unreal Engine and Unity impact production differently: Unreal often requires deep optimisation of existing systems, while Unity frequently requires extending and customising core functionality to meet project needs. This choice directly determines where resources will be spent — on optimisation or on building missing solutions.
This approach may slightly complicate development at the start, but ultimately makes it more predictable and stable: all contributors work within aligned constraints, and issues are identified much earlier.
Late-stage optimisation, on the other hand, almost always leads to trade-offs:
- Reducing content quality or narrowing the audience
- Choosing between stability and performance
- Abandoning mobile-specific optimisations (e.g. battery drain, overheating)
- Or even delaying the release
Monitoring is equally important. At a basic level, this includes regular manual audits using engine tools (e.g., in Unreal Engine: Particle Overdraw, Shader Complexity, Asset Audit, Size Map), logs, and plugins. At a more mature level, it involves automated testing and reporting via CI (Continuous Integration) and telemetry.
2. Hardware Constraints Are Becoming More Complex
Supporting low-tier devices is becoming increasingly challenging, and it’s no longer just about RAM or storage capacity. Modern mobile operating systems and background services actively compete for device resources. As a result, developers are working not with static hardware, but with a dynamically changing environment where available resources are lower than advertised and constantly redistributed.
This means optimisation is no longer just a trade-off between visual quality and FPS. It becomes a task of ensuring stability under strict constraints.
Additionally, everything heavily depends on the type and scale of the game. Top-tier AAA projects can reach 50–70 GB in size, while more compact yet still high-quality projects (such as Mortal Kombat Mobile or Injustice 2 Mobile) fit within 1–2 GB. Ports of large console titles, open-world games, high-resolution assets (models, textures, VFX), or frequent content updates significantly increase memory and storage requirements and demand dedicated optimisation strategies.
Engine choice also affects build size, especially for smaller-scale projects: a base Unreal Engine build can be 50–100 MB larger than Unity. However, as projects grow and asset volumes increase, this difference becomes negligible.
Application size is also critical. For users on low- and mid-tier devices, storage is often limited, forcing them to choose which apps to keep. Therefore, build size optimisation becomes part of the overall accessibility strategy.
3. RAM Is the Primary Constraint
For completeness, it’s important to note that RAM is not the only limitation. Depending on the project, the CPU or GPU could be the bottlenecks, or even the app size. FPS itself, despite its importance, is not a baseline metric since it cannot be accurately predicted without running the game, and CPU/GPU models are harder to categorise. RAM, on the other hand, is a universal and most illustrative metric for defining device tiers.
This metric allows the teams to:
- Estimate whether the game will launch and remain stable
- Track resource consumption growth during development
- Segment devices
For example, if a game consistently uses 700–800 MB of memory:
- 1 GB devices can be considered low-end
- 2 GB devices are mid-tier
- 3+ GB devices are high-end
Although Unreal Engine uses Device Profiles to automatically adjust graphics (textures, shadows, effects, resolution) based on device category, this feature alone might not be enough for big games. For instance, we faced a limit of around 1 GB of available RAM on low-end devices on Mortal Kombat Mobile and managed to maintain stable performance and visual consistency only through a comprehensive approach and full content revision.
Among other things, the engineering team has implemented dynamic loading of character cards during scrolling instead of keeping the full list in memory. Another solution involved caching text layout calculations at the engine level. Significant RAM savings were also achieved through animation optimisation and reducing audio/video bitrate (including in-game cinematics).
4. Scalability Over Maximum Quality
Modern production pipelines are increasingly built around scalability rather than a fixed level of quality.
This means creating adaptive assets and flexible rendering systems that can adjust to device capabilities. In essence, the team is building multiple “versions” of the same game, unified by a consistent player experience.
This approach allows the teams to:
- Ensure stable user experience across a wide range of devices
- Avoid audience fragmentation
- Significantly expand reach
For publishers, this directly impacts business results: the same project can be effectively supported through LiveOps for many years without losing its audience due to technical limitations.
‘Style over raw graphic power’ is one of the most underrated insights of recent years. It’s not necessary to impress players with not-yet-fully-explored features like Lumen or Nanite — it’s far more effective to establish a clear artistic direction for the game early on.
This means approaching creative direction with a focus on visual identity: defining a distinct artistic hook, exploring the game’s setting, and identifying unique elements that preserve recognisability, even when visual fidelity is scaled down.
Games with a strong art-driven approach tend to age much more gracefully, scale more efficiently, and require fewer resources. In contrast, projects built primarily around “technical wow” factors hit audience limitations much faster.
5. Turning Optimisation into Market Advantage
The growing dominance of low- and mid-tier devices is not just a technical constraint. It defines how the mobile market scales.
For product and marketing teams, this shifts how success should be evaluated. Optimisation is no longer only about performance and directly impacts acquisition, retention, and long-term revenue.
Products designed with accessibility in mind naturally lower the barrier to entry, enabling higher install volumes across high-growth regions. Just as importantly, stable performance across a wide range of devices supports stronger retention and more sustainable monetisation over time.
In contrast, projects focused primarily on high-end experiences often deliver strong initial impact but operate within a narrower audience, limiting their ability to scale efficiently.
This shift also affects the Go-To-Market strategy. Expanding reach is no longer just about distribution. It is about relevance across different hardware environments and player segments.
At the same time, visual strategy becomes a key marketing lever. A strong and recognisable art direction helps maintain consistency across performance tiers, supporting both optimisation and brand identity which is critical for long-term LiveOps success.
In this context, optimisation becomes a core component of product-market fit.
Ultimately, the most successful mobile games are those that treat scalability as a foundation, aligning production, design, and market strategy into a unified system.
At Sperasoft, a Keywords Studio, this approach is reflected in a production-first mindset and scalable delivery, enabling partners to reach broader audiences while maintaining quality, performance, and long-term sustainability.
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