Chinese gaming market fell down in 2022. data.ai told about 2022 results and shared thoughts about 2023. Nintendo Switch became the best-selling home console in France in history.
This week:
- UK Gaming Market was recession-resistant in 2022
- data.ai: State of Mobile 2023
- AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue & Downloads in December 2022
- GfK & GSD: The UK Game sales in December 2022 decreased by 8%
- Steam reached the 10M concurrent playing users
- ERA: Videogames remained the largest home entertainment format in the UK in 2022
- GSD: European PC/Console gaming market dropped by 7.1% in 2022
- Famitsu: Boxed games and consoles sales in Japan reached $2.9B in 2022
- Le Figaro: Nintendo Switch became the best-selling home console in France in history
- CNG: Chinese gaming market in 2022 dropped for the first time since the stats collection
- AppMagic: Hypercasual market in Q4 2022
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UK Gaming Market was recession-resistant in 2022
The material for Gamesindustry.biz was prepared by Sam Naji, the consultant at Sparkers.
New releases in 2022 were selling better than in 2021
- Comparison of boxed games sales from the top 10 shows that in 2022 hit games were sold 31% better than in 2021.
- Digital sales of games from the top-10 in 2022 were 52% higher than in 2021.
- Overall sales of new games in 2022 were 16% better than in 2021.
Old games sales in 2022 went down
- The overall number of game sales in 2022 declined. Boxed versions dropped by 10%, digital versions were 2% down compared to 2021.
- It’s important to find reasons why it’s happened. The COVID-19 pandemic increased back-catalog sales in 2020 compared to 2019.
- The overall decline in sales is connected with the decline in back-catalog sales. 19.7M copies were sold in 2022 – it’s 14% lower than in 2021, but 15% more than in pre-pandemic 2019.
Black Friday sales
- Game sales during Black Friday in 2022 were down by 3% compared to 2021.
- Sam Naji connecting it not with a demand slowdown, but with fewer releases in 2022 and an even larger switch to the GAAS models.
data.ai: State of Mobile 2023
The report is generally dedicated to the mobile market, but we will focus on the gaming numbers.
Mobile market
- In 2022 mobile market earned $167B. It’s 2% lower than in 2021.
- In 2022 mobile apps have been downloaded 255 billion times. An increase to 2021 is 11%.
- Game marketing spending growth declined from 22.9% YoY in 2021 to 14% YoY in 2022. In 2023 the growth will be slower too – about 7.5% with the overall spending up to $362B.
- Games revenue has been declining in the majority of developed markets in 2022. In many countries (the US, the UK, and Germany) we can see a direct correlation with decreased disposable income. Spending on apps, on the opposite, has been growing despite the lower income.
Games – overall numbers
- Mobile Games revenue in 2022 decreased by 5% to 2021 and was $110B.
- Downloads of mobile games continue to grow. In 2022 the pace of download growth increased twice compared to 2021.
Top genres by revenue
- RPG – $25.5B revenue (-8.3% YoY). Downloads increased by 3.9%. Genre is generating 31% of overall mobile gaming revenue and 3% of downloads.
- Strategy – $12.1B revenue (-6.6% YoY). Downloads growth by 10%. Genre is responsible for 15% of mobile gaming revenue and 2% of downloads.
- Match – $8.7B of revenue (-5.4% YoY). Downloads increased by 11% in 2022. Genre is generating 11% of overall gaming revenue and 5% of overall gaming downloads (2.8B).
- Casino – $8.3B of revenue (-1.7% YoY). Growth by downloads in 2022 was a significant 48%. The casino is responsible for 10% of overall gaming revenue and 3% of overall downloads.
- Simulation – $8.1B of revenue (-16.8% YoY). Growth by downloads – 13.5%. The genre is responsible for 10% of overall revenue and 17% of overall downloads (10.1B).
Trends
- Positive growth dynamic by revenue in 2022 showed MOBA (Honor of Kings is the leader), Roguelike ARPG (Survivor.io), Idle RPG, casino, and Match 3.
- Positive dynamic by downloads showed hypercasual games (Phone Case DIY), driving simulators (Offroad Truck Simulator), creative sandboxes (ROBLOX), sports simulators (8 Ball Pool), and Merge games (2248 Puzzle).
- An increase in time spent was experienced by creative sandboxes, Team Battle RPGs, 4X-Strategies. A huge drop happened with Battle Royale games.
- Younger audiences prefer party games, simulation, and shooters. A more mature audience is choosing Match 3, slots, puzzles.
Countries-leaders
- 1/3 of gaming mobile revenue is generated by companies with HQ in China. Their impact since 2020 is growing. Positive dynamics are showing companies from Israel and South Korea.
- Companies with HQ in the US have lost some percent of the market since 2021. Japanese companies are losing their positions since 2020 too.
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue & Downloads in December 2022
Revenue
- Genshin Impact was the leader by revenue in December with $164.4M. Honor of Kings stepped down to the second place for the first time in many months, generating $162.5M in December.
- Android leader by revenue was Lineage M with $51.26M (overall – $54,9M) on the platform.
- Goddess of Victory: Nikke dropped to the 7 place on the Android chart. However, in December it earned $58.38M ($30.16M – via Google Play).
Downloads
- FIFA Mobile benefitted from the World Cup that happened in Qatar. The game was #1 by downloads in December with 23.98M of downloads. In November it was downloaded 14.1M times, and in October – 7.7M times. Impressive growth. Indonesia (5.6M of downloads), Brazil (3.8M), and India (2.26M) are leaders by downloads.
- Soccer Super Star – Score! Hero copycat – managed to reach 22.1M downloads. The majority (19.3M) came from Android.
GfK & GSD: The UK Game sales in December 2022 decreased by 8%
- 6.4M games were sold in the UK in December (-8% YoY). 2.85M have been bought in digital format, and more than 3.5M game copies have been sold in physical format.
- FIFA 23, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and God of War Ragnarok are December leaders by sales. Good to mention that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sales split between PlayStation & Xbox is almost even – 54% against 46% respectively.
- In December British people bought about 460 thousand consoles. It’s 17% lower than in December 2021 but 24% higher than in November 2022.
- PlayStation 5 sales increased, while Xbox Series S and Nintendo Switch experienced a decline.
- 1.85M accessories have been sold in December (+44% to November 2022 and -11% to December 2021). DualSense is the most popular accessory.
Steam reached the 10M concurrent playing users
- It happened on January 8 – this day 10.3M users played games on the platform simultaneously.
- On the same day, Steam set a new record by concurrent online users – 33.1M.
- CCU in Steam, according to SteamDB, has been growing in the last decade. Numbers increased sufficiently during the COVID-19 epidemic.
ERA: Videogames remained the largest home entertainment format in the UK in 2022
An ERA is studying buying behaviors of the UK people including their preferable ways of home entertainment.
- The overall market size of home entertainment in the UK in 2022 was £11.1B. It includes music, video, and video games.
- The largest growth showed the video segment with 14.4% growth YoY to £4,43B.
- Games remained the largest home entertainment segment with £4.43B generated in 2022 (+2.3% YoY). Games are responsible for 42.1% of spending on home entertainment in the UK.
GSD: European PC/Console gaming market dropped by 7.1% in 2022
Game sales
- 159M copies were sold in Europe in 2022. It’s 7.1% lower than the previous year.
- 82.5M copies have been sold through digital channels; 76.5M in physical format.
- Sales of new games (released in 2022) increased by 16% compared to 2021 (and sales of new games in 2021).
Markets
- The UK is the largest European market (with a sales decline of 6% YoY).
- Germany is second (-13% YoY). France is third (-3% YoY).
- Game sales increased in Spain (+1% YoY) and Italy (+2% YoY).
Console and accessories
- 5.3M consoles were sold in Europe (not counting the UK and Germany) in 2022. There is a 25% drop compared to the previous year.
- First place by sales is the Nintendo Switch (-15% YoY), PlayStation 5 is second (-35% YoY), and Xbox Series S|X is third (+4% YoY).
- Game accessories sales declined by 10% to 18M products sold. The best accessory by sales was DualSense (+12% YoY). The best-selling non-controller was the Sony PS5 Pulse 3D Headset, which, however, showed a drop of 3.6% compared to 2021.
Famitsu: Boxed games and consoles sales in Japan reached $2.9B in 2022
Famitsu takes into account only physical sales of games and consoles.
- Growth of Japanese gaming retail in 2022 was 4% – from $2.8B in 2021 to $2.9B in 2022.
- Pokemon Scarlet and Violet became the best-selling game of the year. From November 18 to December 25 it was bought more than 4M times. And it’s only boxed versions.
- Splatoon 3 is second with 3.7M boxed sales and release in September.
- Nintendo Switch reached 4.8M sales in Japan in 2022. The overall sales in the region reached 27.7M.
- 9 out of 10 top-selling games were released for the Nintendo Switch. The only exception is the Elden Ring PS4 version.
- PlayStation 5 sold 1.2M consoles in Japan in 2022 with an overall amount of sold consoles of 2.4M.
- Users bought Xbox Series S|X 269.7k times in 2022. The overall system sales reached 398.3k.
Le Figaro: Nintendo Switch became the best-selling home console in France in history
Handheld consoles are not included in the competition.
- Nintendo Switch sales in France reached 7.09M from the release date in 2017.
- Console broke the record for Nintendo Wii (6.3M sold consoles).
- 987k Nintendo Switch consoles were sold in France in 2022. Every second console in the country now is Nintendo Switch. A quarter of households have it at home.
- The best game by sales this year was Pokemon Scarlet & Violet (701k physical copies sold).
CNG: Chinese gaming market in 2022 dropped for the first time since the stats collection
Numbers have been published by the analytics agency CNG using data from Chinese governmental bodies.
- Games sales decreased by 10.3% to $39.7B.
- The mobile market is responsible for 70% of overall market revenue. In 2022 it declined by 14.4% to $28.4B.
- In 2022 the Chinese government issued 512 licenses. In 2021 there were 755 of them.
AppMagic: Hypercasual market in Q4 2022
- Overall downloads of hypercasual games in 2022 increased by 5% and reached 15.5B.
- Downloads in Q4 2021 were by 7% higher than in Q4 2022 (3.97B versus 3.68B).
- There might be a downward trend that started in Q4 2022 as downloads were 2% lower than in Q3 2022.
- Downloads were down in Tier-1 countries, while in less developed regions hypercasual games are still growing.
Successful games of Q4 2022
- Snake Lite-Snake .io Game is the leader with 33M downloads.
- Save the Doge is a new hit and a cultural phenomenon. The game reached 30M and its developers were inspired by viral videos in TikTok.
- Another new game in the chart is the Car Games 3D: Car Racing. It’s a mix of GTA 5 and aquapari.io, and the growth of downloads happened because of the viral effect in TikTok & Twitter.
