Trends
1. The majority of game genres in 2022 fell by downloads. Hypercasual games downloads decreased by 24%. On the contrary, hybrid-casual titles grew by 13% – Sensor Tower forecasts that this genre will replace the traditional hypercasual experience.
2. All genres’ revenue (despite exclusions like tabletop games or action genres) dropped. Shooters experienced a severe fall of 25%, and RPGs are next with a 20% decline. RPG titles are on a downfall trend for 7 consecutive quarters.
3. Asia is the main market for RPG titles. 39% of all revenue is coming from this region.
Hybrid casual market in 2022
- $1.4B is the overall hybrid casual revenue in 2022. The subgenre is growing for the 4th year in a row.
- Downloads in 2022 reached 5.1B which is also a growth from the previous year.
- 99 new hybrid casual games have been released in 2022.
- Hybrid casual games do have longer game sessions (especially on iOS) and average monthly playtime compared to classic hypercasual titles.
- Oceania (+18% YoY), North America (+17% YoY), and Africa (+9% YoY) are leaders in downloads growth for hybrid casual games.
NFT and Web-3 games
- Mobile Web-3 games are declining in downloads from Q3 2022. In H1 2022 downloads of such games reached 46M, in H2 2022 downloads dropped to 29M.
- The situation with MAU is similar, the only difference is that the decline started in Q2 2022.
Meta & monetization trends
- Sensor Tower is positive that we’ve entered the GaaS mobile era.
- Games that are responsible for 97% of mobile games revenue are using different Live Ops approaches.
- 15% of top titles with loot boxes are generating 73% of worldwide mobile revenue.
- Heroes collection is one of the core pillars of monetization. It can be found in 7 out of 10 top titles by revenue.
- Games with a combination of heroes collections and social elements (clans), experience better user engagement compared to games without those features or which have only one of them.
Gaming market numbers in 2022
- Mobile games revenue is declining for 5 consecutive quarters. It started in Q4 2021.
- The US remains the largest mobile gaming market with $5.5B+ revenue in each quarter of 2022. But in Q4 2022 the decline to the previous year was 6%.
- Japanese (-22% YoY), South Korean (-20% YoY), and Taiwanese (-12% YoY) markets experienced the largest declines in 2022.
- India grew by revenue in Q4 2022 by 13% YoY and reached $2.5B annually.
- Since 2019 the US increased its mobile gaming market share from 26% to 29%. Japan is losing it. China too, but Sensor Tower is not tracking 3rd-party Android stores.
- Downloads on the mobile gaming market are stable for the last couple of years. After the peak in Q1-Q2 2020, they declined by 2% in Q3-Q4 2021, and 1% in Q3-Q4 2022.
- India in 2022 generated 17% of worldwide gaming downloads. The US and Brazil generated 8% each. Indonesia – 6%, Russia – 5%.
The US mobile gaming market
- 2022 ended with a decline of 6%.
- Games downloads in the US in 2022 fell lower than pre-pandemic levels. Before COVID-19, in Q4 2019, downloads reached 1,269B. In Q4 2022 they’ve been 1,107B.
The European mobile gaming market
- The European market declined by 11% in revenue in 2022. However, results are still significantly better than pre-pandemic levels.
- Russia’s drop in revenue was 72%, which made it out of the top-5 European markets for the first time in history. The UK also had a steep decline of 13% YoY in Q4 2022.
- Downloads got back to the pre-pandemic levels.
- Despite monetization issues, Russia is still the largest European market by downloads. The country generated 673M downloads in Q4 2022 – 24% of the overall amount.
The Asian gaming market
- Revenue declined by 14% in 2022.
- Downloads in Q4 2022 increased by 6% YoY. It’s the only big region that showed growth – thanks to India.
