Player acquisition costs up 54% year-over-year on mobile in October

App and game developers didn’t get a discount on new users following the release of the iPhone 5s.

The average cost to acquire a new player in October was down only 5 cents from September to $1.63, according to app marketing company Fiksu. While that doesn’t seem like a big deal, that $1.63 average cost is up 54 percent compared to October 2012. Last year, the huge influx of new iPhone 5 users caused gamers to pick up a ton of new apps in the weeks following the hardware’s release.