The German gaming market grew in 2022; Liftoff released a report about casual games; the US and European markets dropped down simultaneously.
This week:
- game: The German gaming market grew by 1% in 2022
- Adjoe & appinio: The German mobile gamer in 2023
- Resident Evil 4 Remake launch outperformed the original RE4 launch in the UK
- GSD: European game sales in Q1 2023 dropped by 11%; March numbers declined by 4%
- Liftoff: Casual Game Market in 2023
- StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of the Streaming market in March 2023
- data.ai: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in Q1 2023
- Circana: The US Gaming market Revenue dropped by 5% in March 2023
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game: The German gaming market grew by 1% in 2022
Overall numbers
- The overall gaming market value reached €9.87B. It’s 1% more than in 2021.
- Online services sales grew by 20% (to €866M); by 1% grew game and in-app sales (to €5.52B); by 3% declined hardware sales (to €3.49B).
Numbers by verticals
- Gaming sales decomposition shows that in-app purchases grew by 2% (to €4.46B) while game sales decreased by 1% (to €1.06B).
- Across all hardware sales, only PC Gaming sales showed growth of 14% to €1.1B. PC Accessories sales declined (-10% to €1.35B); console accessories (-7% to €284M); consoles themselves (-6% to €756M).
Players demography
- 78% of German players are older than 18. The average age is 37.9 years.
- 58% of the German population aged 6 to 69 is playing video games.
- 48% of all gamers are female.
Adjoe & appinio: The German mobile gamer in 2023
The research was based on a survey of 1,000 people with an equal proportion of men and women.
- 7 out of 10 German mobile gamers are using Android. The iOS share across Generation Z is around 50%, while the Android share across older generations reaches 75%.
- Almost 60% of mobile German gamers prefer playing 2-3 mobile games simultaneously.
- 44% of the German gaming audience prefer casual games; 41% – strategies (favorite male genre); 38% – puzzles (favorite female genre).
- Only 17% of German gamers are playing paid games.
- Over 60% of mobile German gamers find new games through ads, which they see while playing current games.
- About 60% of the audience feels comfortable with personalized ads.
- 39% of respondents are playing the game often if it does have Rewarded Ads. 27% of respondents mentioned that it leads to longer sessions.
- 22% of German players stopped spending money on games. 14% started to play less. About 20% of gamers decided to switch from payments to Rewarded Ads.
Resident Evil 4 Remake launch outperformed the original RE4 launch in the UK
- Resident Evil 4 Remake sold 29% better than the original game released in March 2005 on GameCube. We’re speaking about physical versions only.
- However, Resident Evil 4 Remake sales are 23% less than Resident Evil’s Village and 38% less than Resident Evil 2 Remake.
- Out of three remakes released by Capcom, only Resident Evil 4 managed to outperform the original by physical sales.
- 73% of launch physical sales of RE4 Remake came from PlayStation 5; 14% – from Xbox consoles; 13% – from PlayStation 4.
GSD: European game sales in Q1 2023 dropped by 11%; March numbers declined by 4%
Q1 2023 results
- 39M games have been sold in Q1 2023 in Europe. It’s 11% lower than in Q1 2022.
- Hogwarts Legacy is the best-selling game of the quarter. Moreover, it’s the fastest-selling game in Europe after FIFA since 2017.
- In Q1 2023 1.5M consoles were sold in Europe (without the UK). It’s 41% more than during a similar period in 2022.
- PlayStation 5 sales increased by 369%. Nintendo Switch declined by 18%; Xbox Series S|X – by 10%.
- 4.7M accessories have been sold in Q1 2023. An increase from the previous year was 5%.
March 2023 results
- 13.6M games for PC & Consoles have been sold in Europe. It’s 4% lower than in 2022.
- Resident Evil 4 Remake topped the charts in March. After the first two weeks, sales numbers are worse than Resident Evil Village (-11%) and Resident Evil 2 Remake. However, sales numbers are better than RE3 Remake by 57%.
- In March, console sales in European countries (without the UK) reached 570k. An increase from the previous year is 67%.
- PlayStation 5 is the main console in the European market. Its sales increased since March 2022 by 5 times.
- Nintendo Switch sales dropped by 19% YoY; Xbox Series S|X results also declined by 13%.
- 1.5M accessories have been sold in March 2023. It’s 13% more than a year before. The leader by sales is DualSense.
Liftoff: Casual Game Market in 2023
Data were collected from February 1 2022 to February 1, 2023. More than 390B impressions, 16.7B clicks, and 100M installs have been analyzed.
- An average CPI in casual games is $0.98. The price on Android is $0.63; on iOS – $2.23.
- An average D7 ROAS in casual games is 7.6%. On Android this number equals 7%; on iOS – 7.8%.
- The highest CPI is at the NA market – $3.59. EMEA shows a CPI price of $0.9; APAC – $0.76; LATAM – $0.55.
- However, the NA region shows the highest ROAS D7 – 8.1%. In EMEA the return is 6.5%; in APAC – 6.4%; in LATAM – 4.8%.
- Casual games (Liftoff includes hypercasual games here too) generate 86.9% of all downloads. Sports and racing games are generating 6.6%. Midcore games – 3.3%, casino titles – 3.2%.
- Interesting that 74.7% of all mid-core games downloads are coming from ads that are shown in casual titles.
Trends
- Only 2 successful Match-3 games have been released in the last two years – Garden Affairs and BTS Island.
- The share of downloads of hypercasual games decreased dramatically from 50% in Q1 2021 to a little above 30% in Q1 2023. More and more developers are moving from traditional hypercasual to hybrid-casual titles.
- Merge is the genre where the next revolution might happen.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of the Streaming market in March 2023
- The number of hours viewed on Twitch in Q1 2023 declined by 1% compared to Q4 2022.
- If we’ll compare Q1 2023 results with Q1 2019, we’ll see a 95% growth in hours watched.
- However, the Twitch trend by hours viewed in 2023 is negative.
- Diablo IV reached top-10 by hours watched in March with 28M hours. Resident Evil 4 Remake was close with just 2% fewer hours.
- League of Legends (108M hours watched); GTA V (101M hours), and Valorant (84M hours) are the most popular games of March.
data.ai: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in Q1 2023
Revenue
- The revenue decline after 2022 has stopped. It’s now on a plateau.
- Three leaders by revenue compared to the previous quarter are the same – Honor of Kings, Candy Crush Saga, and Genshin Impact.
- Two old-new games are in the top 10 by revenue – Gardenscapes (jumped from #17 to #9), and Uma Musume Pretty Derby (#26 to #10).
- Gardenscapes increased its marketing spend in latter 2022. Royal Match did the same – the paid UA increased from December to January by 2 times.
Downloads
- Subway Surfers, Garena Free Fire, and Candy Crush Saga are worldwide leaders in Q1 2023 by downloads.
- Attack Hole from Homa appeared in top downloads for the first time, Gardenscapes reached #8 (+41 positions), Going Balls is #9 (from #28), and Football League 2023 reached #10 (from #55).
- Street Fighter: Duel showed a successful launch, more than half of the downloads are from the US.
- Block Blast Adventure Master is in the top-5 by downloads in Germany, Singapore, South Korea, and Australia. That’s the freshest game out of the puzzles, which reached the top.
Circana: The US Gaming market Revenue dropped by 5% in March 2023
- The US market revenue in March 2023 reached $4.6B. It’s 5% lower than a year before.
- 83% of the volume is coming from games ($3.83B). The decline from the previous year is 7%.
- Resident Evil 4 Remake replaced Hogwarts Legacy at the first position of the chart.
- Hardware sales, contrary, increased by 10% and reached $566M.
- PlayStation 5 is the best-selling console of the month in both unit and dollar sales. In fact, PlayStation 5 started to outperform PS4 numbers by sales dynamics.
- Xbox Series S|X is second by revenue, but Nintendo Switch is second by units sold.
- Accessories spending increased by 1% YoY and reached $239M. The black DualSense is the best-selling accessory of the month.
