Table of Content
World Series of Poker (WSOP Poker) is a hugely popular mobile poker app that gained a significant amount of traction in less time. Right now, the platform boasts over 50 million players worldwide and generated $245 million in revenue in 2023.
Playtika LTD, developer of WSOP Poker, has also created many other successful games like Solitaire Grand Harvest, Caesars Slots, Poker Heat, and many more. Their WSOP Poker took the online poker gaming industry by storm and enhanced the poker room experience. The platform offers realistic experiences just like the actual World Series of Poker Tournaments.
The success of WSOP Poker also lies within the booming mobile gaming sector, especially mobile poker. Mobile poker is experiencing exponential growth, with projections estimating the global online poker market is expected to reach $283.42 billion by 2032.
This success of WSOP has shown what a value-driven app can achieve. If you want to enter the industry, learning from these growth metrics can help you refine your online poker app development approach to enhance user engagement and improve revenue potential.
So, whether you’re an entrepreneur or developer looking to tap into the lucrative online gaming industry, this guide can help you.
Read More: Texas Holdem Game Software Cost
This blog guides you with the practical, step by step roadmap on how to develop an app like WSOP Poker, also covering the key features to include, cost of development, and growth strategies to succeed in the gaming market.
The WSOP Poker app has diverse features that make the platform enjoyable for players and unique in the crowded market.
Simply put, features are the key elements of your app that dictate the true value of your brand in the competitive market.
So, if you also want to achieve success like WSOP Poker, you need to include core features that drive engagement and enhance the gaming experience of users.
Below are the lists of essential features that will help you make your Poker app appealing to broad audiences.
Intuitive UI/UX
The user interface is the first thing that users pay attention to, and it also decides whether they will use the app again. Hence, the poker game app should offer a truly clean and intuitive interface. An intuitive user interface also plays a big role in enhancing the user experience. From finding the poker table and managing the profile to accessing game settings, everything should be easy to use and, at the same responsive as per every screen size.
Game Variations
Game variations are the foundation of the poker apps since some players prefer playing Pot Limit Poker, and some prefer Texas Holdem. Nourishing your poker app with a wide range of variations like Texas Holdem, Omaha, Seven Card Stud, Five Card Draw, Chinese Poker, etc., can provide your players with a dynamic gaming experience.
Social Features
Social features are essential for keeping the players hooked on your app. Also, social features like in-game chat, friend lists, and leaderboards have become the talk of town recently. These features emphasize the sense of community among the players, allowing them to share, learn, and play together.
Monetization Features
By adding monetization features to your Poker application, you can leverage revenue streams. You can add in-app purchases, advertisements, real money tournaments, affiliates, and sponsorships; these are some great ways to generate revenues from your poker app.
Security and Fairplay
The app must be integrated with end-to-end data encryption security measures. Protecting player's data, transactions, and credentials from cyber-attacks is a must in order to win the player's trust. Also, ensuring that your platform is completely fair for everyone, using Random Number Generator (RNG) algorithms enhances the gaming experience for the players.
Real-Time Multiplayer Options
Allow your players to immerse into the highly dynamic and challenging virtual world where they can play poker against other players in real time and put their skills to the test.
Read More: Poker Game API Provider
How to develop your own app like WSOP Poker for your business? Developing any type of gaming app is not an overnight job; it requires a complete end-to-end implementation of ideas, creativity, refining, and making it usable for end users.
To develop your poker app effectively and successfully, follow our curated, easy-to-understand steps and embark on the gaming journey where creators meet players.
Market Research & Planning
The first step in poker app development is market research and planning. By market research, you get a clear idea of what exactly your industry holds for your business.
Thorough market research provides valuable data and insights about your industry, helping you make informed decisions for your business. In this stage, you will have to analyze your competitors. In your case (WSOP Poker) is your primary competitor.
You need to analyze your competitor find gaps, strengths, and weaknesses, and turn them into a lucrative opportunity for your advantage.
By researching the market, you come up with these questions, and these can help you identify the opportunities to make your poker app better than your competitors.
By using these insights, you can plan your poker app development project more effectively. Your primary job is to analyze the data you've collected and use them to get ahead of your competitors. Remember, WSOP Poker is a huge platform with a massive user base; therefore, pay attention to every key aspect you find.
Once you've collected the key insights, plan your game services. You need to offer your target audiences what others are not doing. This includes game modes, features, game variations, etc.
You need to define your "Unique Selling Proposition (USP)" for your players. To provide USP to your players, ask yourself this question: what will make your poker app stand out from your competitors? No matter who's your competitor, the winner will be who will attract the audience most.
In addition to business models, if you want to make money from your poker app, consider incorporating multiple revenue streams like in-app purchases, ads, affiliates, etc. However, do consider one thing: choose a model that perfectly blends and aligns with your business structure and doesn't hurt your users' experiences.
You need to completely invest your time and resources to maximize your success.
Overall, create a complete blueprint of what your poker gaming app will offer to your target audience and how it will help in your business growth.
Choosing the Right Technology Stack
After the market analysis and planning, the next step is to decide on what technologies your mobile poker game development will utilize.
The technology you will choose will also decide how flexible, scalable, and robust your app will be developed. From frontend to backend and server-side development, it all defines your poker app gameplay.
Moreover, the technology stack you choose is also determined by the platform you are targeting. Different platforms require different technologies.
If you want to create a poker application that supports multiple platforms (Android and iOS), then using Unity or Unreal engine is the best tool. For a more concise understanding, below are the following tech stack you can utilize for your poker game software development:
Game Engine: Unity 3D, Unreal Engine
Backend: Node.js, Socket.IO, Python/Java
Frontend: React Native, Angular
Database: MySQL, MongoDB
Cloud Services: AWS, Azure
Payment Gateway Integration: Stripe, PayPal, Skrill
Designing: Adobe, Maya
Design & Prototyping
The game design is the core element of your app, like WSOP Poker; therefore, it should be top-notch. This is the phase where you'll create the layout of your app, theme, buttons, tables, etc.
It is crucial to create a simple and user friendly app interface that allows your users to easily access the platform features.
Avoid heavy use of multimedia elements as it can make the interface feel heavy and unresponsive. Keep your app interface as simple as possible. Create a prototype of your poker game first, and to do so, you can use the Figma tool. A prototype will work as a blueprint for your poker game.
This will allow you to align your vision with the visual framework. If the prototype is not offering the experience how you intended, you can further ask your developers to test and refine it according to the vision.
Poker App Development
Once the designing and prototyping are finished and you've approved the UI of your poker app, it's time to dive into the actual process.
In this phase, you'll have to work closely with your poker game development company and select the programming frameworks and tools to develop your poker gaming app.
For the development, you have several choices, such as native and cross-platform development. With native, you will only be able to develop your game for one particular platform (Android or iOS).
And with cross-platform, you can make your app for both platforms by utilizing the same code structure.
Next, the development team will write codes to bring the prototype fully functional as intended. This process includes building game features like joining tables, folding, playing against the computer (AI), viewing the history of tournaments, etc. All these fall into the frontend and backend development.
Also, to create an engaging and robust poker app, it is crucial to understand the core game mechanics and game logic that ensure seamless and exceptional gameplay.
Besides game mechanics, focus on integrating features like RNG that will ensure that the cards are not dealing in the same pattern over and over again. Integrate Blockchain to ensure the fairness and security of your poker gaming platform.
Testing & Quality Assurance
In order to make sure the finished code is working as expected and doesn't have any sort of issues and bugs, testing and quality assurance must be set in place.
Your QA testers must conduct in-depth testing of the codes to ensure your poker game is completely free of bugs and all the functionalities are working in the way it was meant to be.
The testing of the app is done before its release in the app store. There are several testing phases that are done before it gets published. Some of the testing phases are:
These tests are necessary to ensure the quality and performance of your poker app.
Launch & Marketing
After all of the tedious and hard work for your poker game development, the app launch phase has come. To launch your app, you can select app marketplaces, such as App Store and Google Play Store.
After publishing your poker app, you need to start implementing marketing strategies to gain maximum visibility in less time. There are a lot of options you can opt for, such as App Store Optimization, affiliate programs, leveraging social media platforms, investing in paid advertising, creating an engaging poker website and providing users with informative and valuable information and tips regarding the poker game.
Read More: How to Develop Your Own Poker Game?
Your app success is determined by the tech stack you choose for development. This ensures smooth performance across the various devices, functionality, etc. Following are the best tech stack options for creating your poker app development process.
Game Development Engine
● Unity
● Unreal Engine
Frontend Technologies
● HTML5
● CSS
Cross-Platform Frameworks
● React Native
● Flutter
Backend Technologies
● Node.js
Databases
● MySQL
● MongoDB
Real-Time Communication
● WebSockets
● Socket.IO
Cloud Services
● AWS (Amazon Web Services)
● Google Cloud Platform
● Firebase
Accurately estimating the cost of developing a poker app is not possible unless the requirements are discussed with the poker game developers. Moreover, the cost totally depends on several factors like the complexity of features, development team, animation, graphics, platform, backend, frontend, third-party integrations, security features, and post-launch expenses.
WSOP Poker is a huge platform with an extensive list of features, dynamic poker rooms, interactive tournaments, multiple monetization models, extensive servers, multiple platform support, etc.
So, analyzing these factors, an estimated cost of developing an app like WSOP Poker can be around $80,000 to $130,000.
However, this is just an estimation; the cost can be high or less depending on the circumstances under which this app was developed.
Read More: How to Develop an App Like Zynga Poker
On average, the cost of a basic poker app with fewer features and functionalities for single platforms (Android or iOS) can be between $10,000 to $20,000. For a more advanced poker gaming platform that supports multiple platforms and contains advanced features and functionalities, the cost can start from $30,000 to $60,000.
Building an app like WSOP Poker is undoubtedly a profitable venture. However, building a game that stands out in the crowded market is a challenging task. The success of your poker app development heavily relies on the experience it delivers that entices players to keep coming back more.
To successfully launch your poker app, following the above steps, from researching to marketing and paying attention to every key detail, is crucial. Moreover, adhering to gambling laws and regulations and accordingly obtaining the license will allow you to run your business smoothly without any complications.
If you have any plans to launch your own poker app like WSOP Poker, the best approach is to hire a poker app development company with a team of professionals. A well-experienced and tech-optimized company knows how to deliver a captivating poker gaming experience across all game variations.
In case you are searching for a reliable game development partner, feel free to drop us a line to discuss your project idea. At Orion InfoSolutions, we have 10+ years of experience in game development and have successfully delivered countless gaming projects for a worldwide clientele. We build gaming solutions that meet the highest standards of the market.
DC Kumawat is the CEO of Orion InfoSolutions, a leading provider of IT solutions to businesses of all sizes. He has over 14+ years of experience in the IT industry. He is a passionate advocate for the use of technology to improve business performance.