- Games still account for 61% of all users’ spending on apps.
- In Q3 2022 users spent weekly $1.5B on mobile games and downloaded more than 1.1B games. It’s 25% more than in pre-pandemic Q3 2019.
- In H1 2022 mobile games in App Store & Google Play earned $41.2B. It’s 7.5% lower than in H1 2021, but 14% more than in H1 2020.
- Downloads continue to grow. In H1 2022 mobile games were downloaded 30B times. It’s 11.5% more than in H1 2021.
- The number of games in the App Store has been declining since 2016. The number of new releases is constantly small since 2018.
- The number of games earning $10M+ per year is growing. In 2021 this amount reached 925 games.
- 63% of all mobile gaming revenue in the US in H1 2022 was generated by games from top-100. In 2020 this percentage was 62%.
- 25 games released in 2021 reached top-100 by revenue (against 19 in 2020). On average it took them 4 months (against 7 in the H1 2020).
The most successful genres of H1 2022 (without Ad Monetization).
- RPG – $12.8B (31% of all IAP volume). 2% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue – 9.4%. YoY decline by downloads – 3.5%.
- Strategy – $6.4B (15% of all IAP volume). 2% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue – 3.2%. YoY growth by downloads – 16.5%.
- Match – $4.4B (11% of all IAP volume). 5% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue – 6.8%. YoY growth by downloads – 15%.
- Casino – $4.2B (10% of all IAP volume). 2% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue – 1.9%. YoY growth by downloads – 35.2%.
- Simulation – $4.2B (10% of all IAP volume). 17% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue – 13.7%. YoY growth by downloads – 25%.
- Shooters – $2.5B (6% of all IAP volume). 4% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue – 7.2%. YoY growth by downloads – 10.8%.
Trends
- The number of hypercasual games at the top is decreasing. Developers do experiments with hybrid monetization.
- Casual games managed to reach the growing downloads. However, the revenue is still behind the trail and beyond 2020 and 2021 results.
3 advice from data.ai & Deconstructor of Fun on how to work on the crisis market:
- Be creative. Test your marketing. Diversify channels.
- Use IPs.
- Look outside of iOS and the US. Use different monetization formats.
