European gaming sales are rising, while markets in the US & China are going down; Newzoo shared insights of the IP usage in mobile games; 93% of PC games in Germany were sold in the digital form.
This week:
- NPD: Gaming Sales in the US in H1 2022 dropped by 10%
- Sensor Tower: League of Legends: Wild Rift reached $500M plank
- GSD Market Data: Game Sales in Europe increased in H1 2022
- The Chinese Gaming Market decreased for the first time in 14 years
- AppMagic: Top-10 hypercasual titles of Q2 2022
- Newzoo: IP usage in Mobile Games
- StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: Twitch views dropped in June 2022
- Sensor Tower: Mobile version of Diablo Immortal reached $100M
- Sensor Tower: RAID: Shadow Legends earned its first $1B on mobile devices
- game: 93% of PC titles on PC in 2021 were bought digitally
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NPD: Gaming Sales in the US in H1 2022 dropped by 10%
- The negative dynamic that started in May continued in June. In the first summer month sales went down by 11% to $4.3B.
- In H1 2022 the gaming industry in the US earned $26.3B. It’s 10% lower than a year before.
- Elden Ring became the best game by dollar revenue in the US in H1 2022.
- Hardware sales in June dropped by 8% to $371M. In H1 2022 they declined by 9% to $2.1B. The first place by dollar revenue in both June and H1 2022 is taken by PlayStation 5. The unit sales leader is Nintendo Switch.
Sensor Tower: League of Legends: Wild Rift reached $500M plank
- In H1 2022 the game generated $218M, which made it the second MOBA title after the Honor of Kings ($1.4B during the same period). Brawl Stars is third ($149.5M).
- League of Legends: Wild Rift is the third Riot Games title on mobile devices and the most successful so far. Teamfight Tactics earned $299M, and Legends of Runeterra – earned $24M.
- Riot Games’ overall revenue from the mobile market after 16 months is $828M.
- The main region for League of Legends: Wild Rift is China, where the game earned $364.6M only on the App Store, which is 72.2% of overall revenue. In China, the game was released on 8 October 2021 with Tencent’s help. The US is in second place by revenue (6.8%), and South Korea is third (3.7%).
- App Store is responsible for 84.2% of overall game revenue ($425.2M); Google Play – for 15.8% (about $80M). But outside of China, the balance is different, App Store generating 43% of revenue while 57% is coming from Google Play.
- Riot Games is one of the few examples of western developers’ success in the eastern markets.
GSD Market Data: Game Sales in Europe increased in H1 2022
- 76.1M game copies were sold in Europe in H1 2022. It’s a 13.5% increase from the same period in 2021.
- Germany became the largest European game market with 15.4M game sales (+13.6% YoY). The UK is next – 14.3M (+2% YoY), France is third – 10.2M sales (+12.1% YoY).
- Elden Ring is the most popular game in Europe. However, the first place in physical sales is taken by Pokémon Legends: Arceus. It helped it to reach third place in overall charts, without the digital version taken into account (Nintendo is not sharing digital sales of its titles).
- About 2M consoles were sold in Europe in H1 2022, the drop is 21%.
- PlayStation 5 sales went down by 44%, but it still became the second most popular console in the region.
- Nintendo Switch is first by sales with a 7% YoY increase. Xbox Series S|X is also showing a positive dynamic with a 9% YoY increase in H1 2022.
- 8.6M accessories were sold in H1 2022, it’s 4.2% lower than a year before.
- The most popular accessory is DualSense with a sales increase of 53%. DualShock 4 is second.
The Chinese Gaming Market decreased for the first time in 14 years
Numbers were reported by the semi-official Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.
- In H1 2022 the gaming market in China fell by 1.8%.
- The number of gamers dropped from 666.5M in December 2021 to 665.7M at the end of June.
- Chinese gaming companies’ revenue from the local market decreased by 4.25% in H1 2022. For comparison, in H1 2020 the industry showed 30.4% growth; in H1 2021 – 8.3% growth.
- However, Chinese gaming companies’ revenue from foreign markets increased by 6.2% to $9B in H1 2022.
Experts are naming game licenses regulation and children’s restrictions as the main factors of the Chinese gaming market troubles.
AppMagic: Top-10 hypercasual titles of Q2 2022
- Hypercasual titles were downloaded 4.4B times via App Store and Google Play in Q2 2022. It’s a 10% increase from Q2 2021.
- Two titles from Supersonic Studios are leading the chart. It’s Bridge Race (55.6M downloads) and Tall Man Run (49.5M downloads).
- Fill the Fridge from Rollic Games is third with 48.8M downloads. The game also managed to receive $248.7k after store commission and taxes through IAP, which is the second result in the hypercasual segment in Q2 2022.
- Count Masters is closing the top 10. Gamers downloaded it 27.8M times in April-June.
Newzoo: IP usage in Mobile Games
- 9 out of 10 top-downloaded mobile games in 2021 on the App Store were based on IP. The only title that is not is Soccer Super Star.
- Paying users are downloading IP-based titles 2.84 times more than games based on original IP.
- In the US 3 mobile games in 2021 from the top 20 by revenue (App Store) were based on game IPs.
- In Japan, 12 mobile games in 2021 from the top 20 by revenue (App Store) have been using IP. 4 of them used non-gaming IPs, 8 – gaming IPs.
- In China, the same amount of mobile games in 2021 from the top 20 by revenue (App Store) used IPs – 12. But 4 of them were gaming and 8 – were non-gaming.
- The three IPs that bring the most downloads is from Marvel, Cartoon Network, and Disney original IPs.
- Most revenue-generating IPs are Umamusume: Pretty Derby, Marvel, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Newzoo covers Marvel Strike Force and Umamusume: Pretty Derby case studies and the material; also showing Tilting Point, Bandai Namco Entertainment & GREE Entertainment’s approach to the IP-based titles.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: Twitch views dropped in June 2022
- Despite the dominant position, in June 2022 Twitch views dropped by 4% – from 1.8B hours to 1.7B.
- Facebook Gaming showed solid growth of 21% from 350M watched hours to 425M.
- YouTube Gaming in June reached 290M watched hours on live streams.
- Three top games on Twitch are League of Legends (114M hours), GTA V (102M hours), and Valorant (95M hours).
- The situation is different on YouTube Gaming. Minecraft is first (17M hours), Garena Free Fire is second (16M hours), and Fortnite is third (12M hours).
Sensor Tower: Mobile version of Diablo Immortal reached $100M
- It took a little bit less than 2 months to reach this plank.
- Only Pokemon GO earned $100M faster, in just 2 weeks after the release.
Sensor Tower: RAID: Shadow Legends earned its first $1B on mobile devices
- It took RAID: Shadow Legends a bit less than 3.5 years to hit the goal.
- In H1 2022 the game earned $155M.
- The majority of revenue comes from the US ($595.5M – 59.4% of the overall amount). Germany is second (5.8%), and the UK is third (4.5%).
- $594.6M (59.3% of the overall amount) came from Google Play, App Store is responsible for the remaining 40.7%. But the game is also available on PC via Plarium Play, so the real revenue numbers are higher.
- The US is the leader in downloads (15.3M – 24.7% of the overall amount). Russia is second (10.8%), and France is third (4.3%).
- Google Play is responsible for 45.5M of downloads (or 73.4%).
- The most successful game of Plarium before the RAID: Shadow Legends was Vikings: War of Clans which made $541M of revenue.
game: 93% of PC titles on PC in 2021 were bought digitally
- The popularity of digital versions in Germany increased in 2021. Talking of both PC & Consoles, digital games sales are taking 59% of all sales.
- 93% of PC titles were sold digitally.
- On consoles, however, the situation is different. In Germany, only 36% of console titles were sold digitally. Representative of the Germany Game Industry Association thinks that is connected with a tradition of collection.
- The German market in 2021 increased by 17% to 9.8B euros.
