Newzoo told about the current regulations in China; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II earned $1B in the first 10 days; Huawei AppGallery reached 580M MAU.
This week:
- Google: Puzzle games on Mobile Devices in 2022
- Newzoo: Chinese Gaming Market Regulations in 2022
- Time2Play: Canadian mobile gamers habits in 2022
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II earned $1B in 10 days
- KantanGames: Japanese PC gaming market doubled in the last 3 years
- AppMagic: Top mobile games in October 2022 by Revenue and Downloads
- Huawei AppGallery reached 580M MAU
- Sensor Tower: Top Mobile games in Southeast Asia by Downloads in September 2022
- Sensor Tower: Top Mobile games by Revenue in Southeast Asia in September 2022
- GSD: PC & Console gaming market in the UK grew in October 2022
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Google: Puzzle games on Mobile Devices in 2022
Google names Match-3, Hidden Object, and other games that can be found in the relevant category of Google Play as Puzzles.
- Puzzle gamers learn about new games through App Store (45%), in-game ads (44%), social network ads (42%), recommendations (39%), and YouTube videos (32%).
- 73% of puzzle lovers do not think that ads have a negative effect on gameplay.
- 62% of users are interested in the ads that are shown.
- Google highlighted an obvious thing. The main engaging factor in games is exciting gameplay. The right challenge level (46%) and engaging story (44%) are next.
- In top-3 reasons why puzzle gamers stop playing games are non-interesting gameplay (45%), a lot of ads (43%), and a lot of bugs & glitches (40%).
- Only 40% of puzzle gamers are part of gaming communities.
- 78% of puzzle gamers think that localization is important.
Newzoo: Chinese Gaming Market Regulations in 2022
Child protection
- China’s regulation allows children and teenagers under 18 years to play only from 8 to 9 PM on Fridays, weekends, and holidays.
- Children aged 8 to 16 years have a monthly game payment limit of $30. Teenagers from 16 to 18 years can spend twice as more – $60.
- Gaming companies are obliged to identify the person under 18 years. ID is required to play the game.
- Users under 18 years can’t spend their money on streaming platforms. Teenagers from 16 years old can stream but only under an adult person’s control.
- People under 18 years old can’t participate in any E-Sports events. They also can’t buy/rent gaming accounts.
Newzoo suggests that these regulations will negatively impact the Chinese gaming market in the long run. Chinese children won’t have a habit of playing games. However, in reality, a big chunk of those regulations is possible to pass with a help of adults.
Licenses
- All games with a feature of receiving money (Premium or IAP) are required to have a license to be published in China.
- The Chinese government issued 9,177 licenses in 2017 for Chinese developers, and 456 licenses for foreign developers. In 2022 (valid for October 2022) the Chinese government provided only 314 licenses – all of them for local companies.
Grey zone
- Steam is still available in China. There are rumors around for the last couple of years that it will be blocked, but it’s still alive. Now gamers are using Game Accelerator and VPN services to get access to it.
- VR and Cloud Gaming platforms are not currently regulated by the government.
- Mobile games with only ad monetization are not required to get a license. But in June 2022 three games with such monetization were fined by the Chinese government. It took their revenue and banned them from App Store.
- There is a huge grey console market in China. People are buying consoles from Japan & Hong Kong to play games that didn’t get a license to launch on the local market.
What Chinese companies are doing.
- Big Chinese companies are working on self-regulation. Tencent, NetEase, and 37 Interactive have a technology of identification by the face. Tencent also registered a patent that helps to verify users by their location.
- Chinese companies that want to launch in the local market, are focused in general on big F2P titles, which are launching on several platforms. Only one license is required for a multi-platform release.
- Chinese companies started to focus on overseas markets. Their revenue outside of China increased from $9.6B in 2018 to $18B in 2021.
- Chinese companies are actively investing in foreign companies. Ubisoft, From Software, 1C Entertainment, and Quantic Dream – all of them have Chinese participation.
What developers should do?
- Releasing a game in the Chinese market with a Premium/IAP game is a hard job. Even with a partner.
- Even if you were extremely lucky and got the license, you need to compete with other projects. For this, you’ll need a world-known IP, that matches the Chinese audience’s interests. 7 out of 10 foreign games in Chinese top charts were based on big IPs.
- One of the few remaining relatively easy ways to enter the Chinese market now is to launch the game on Steam. But there is always a risk that the platform will be closed.
Time2Play: Canadian mobile gamers habits in 2022
- 52.3% of Canadian gamers are playing on mobile phones more than on other devices.
- 17% spent in games 1-7 hours weekly. 9% – from 30 minutes to 1 hour. 8% – from 7 to 14 hours.
- Top-3 titles by downloads in App Store in 2022 in Canada are Diablo Immortal (275.7k downloads), Bucket Crusher (210.6k downloads), and Defend the Farm – Merge Plants (183.5k downloads).
- Google Play leaders in 2022 are Pocket Monster Rush (354.4k downloads), Apex Legends Mobile (303.9k downloads), and Ni No Kuni: Cross Worlds (213.4k downloads).
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II earned $1B in 10 days
- The previous record was held by Call of Duty: Black Ops II. In 2012 the game reached the number in 15 days.
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II is now the most successful entertainment product of 2022.
- Second-week decrease in physical sales in the UK was only 42%. It’s an incredible number.
- Physical copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II in the UK is selling 40% better than Call of Duty Vanguard.
KantanGames: Japanese PC gaming market doubled in the last 3 years
- Japanese PC gaming market by the end of 2021 reached $896M. It’s twice as more compared to 2018.
- 16 million PC gamers were living in Japan in 2021. It’s about 28.8% of the overall player base.
- Of 16 million PC gamers, 4.5 million are playing exclusively on PC. In 2015 there were 2.2 million such players.
- However, Japan is a mobile-first market. It’s 3x times larger than the console one. And PC gaming is still considered niche.
AppMagic: Top mobile games in October 2022 by Revenue and Downloads
Revenue
- Honor of Kings earned $194M in October.
- Players spent $141M on PUBG Mobile last month.
- Genshin Impact reached the top 3 with $121M revenue in October.
Downloads
- Gangster Crime, Mafia City became the leader by downloads with 27.1M users. The vast majority of installs (26.7M) came from Google Play. The game is actively using GTA: San Andreas references in ads. In reality, this is a budget GTA copycat, that is using fake materials (even in the app stores screenshots).
Huawei AppGallery reached 580M MAU
- The number was reached in Q3 2022. It’s 16% more than it was in Q3 2020.
- In 2021 people downloaded apps in AppGallery 432B times. It’s 96% more than in 2019.
- There were 6M developers on the platform in Q3 2022. It’s twice as more compared to Q3 2020.
- The number of apps in AppGallery reached 220k in Q3 2022. It’s 120% more than it was two years ago.
Sensor Tower: Top Mobile games in Southeast Asia by Downloads in September 2022
- Save the Doge was the top-downloaded game in the region with 6.5M downloads. Indonesia is responsible for 49.4% of installs; Vietnam brought 25.7%.
- Garena Free Fire is in second place with 3.9M downloads. Vietnam is responsible for 37.6%; Indonesia – for 35.4%.
Sensor Tower: Top Mobile games by Revenue in Southeast Asia in September 2022
- Mobile Legends: Bang Bang from Moonton is first with almost $9M revenue (+6.9% YoY). 37.9% comes from Malaysia, 29.1% – from Indonesia, and 17.2% – from the Philippines.
- Garena Free Fire is second with $8.1M monthly revenue, 39.3% of which comes from Thailand and 28.9% from Indonesia.
GSD: PC & Console gaming market in the UK grew in October 2022
Games
- 2.83M games were sold in the country in October 2022. It’s 11.2% more than a year before.
- 62% of sales are digital (+36% YoY). Retail sales dropped by 14% in 2021.
- The increase in sales is connected to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 release. The game launched much better (by 92%) than Call of Duty Vanguard (which was released in November 2021).
- 57% of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been made by PlayStation owners (42% are PS5); 33% is an Xbox part, and 10% – is a PC.
- FIFA 23 is showing great results too. It’s performing 6% better in October than the previous installment.
Hardware
- A little less than 175k consoles have been sold in October 2022. It’s a 1% decline from the previous year.
- Compared to September 2022, PlayStation 5 sales went down by 6%. Despite this, the console is still in first place with a slight margin over Xbox Series.
- Nintendo Switch sales increased by 5% to the previous month.
- Time-to-date, there is only a 40k unit difference between the first and the last console in the UK.
- 669k accessories have been sold in the UK in October 2022. It’s 9% less than in September, and 7.5% less than in October 2021. Controllers for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series are on top of the charts.
