European & US sales in April; Mobile Puzzles market in Q1 2023 from Apptica; the vast majority of industry workers do want to try a 4-day working day.
In these two weeks:
- Newzoo: Cross-platform players are spending more time & buying more often in games
- Skillsearch: 80% of Gaming Industry workers would like to try a 4-day working week
- Apptica: Mobile Puzzles market in Q1 2023
- Circana: The US Gaming Market dropped by 5% in April 2023
- data.ai: State of Mobile Games Revenue 2023
- GSD: Game sales in Europe dropped in April 2023; hardware sales skyrocketed
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Newzoo: Cross-platform players are spending more time & buying more often in games
More than 42 thousand people from different worlds parts participated in the research.
- Almost every fourth player has played on three platforms – PC, console, and Mobile – in the last half a year. Newzoo is naming such users as tri-platform players.
- The smallest audience is choosing PC & Consoles only without paying attention to Mobile, there are only 6% of such users. 14% are playing only on PC or only on Consoles.
- There is a direct correlation between the number of platforms on which the gamer is playing, the amount of time, and the probability of payment.
- Among those who are playing on one platform, the paying share is 57%. If the user is playing on two platforms, paying probability is up to 64%. If the user is playing on three platforms, there is an 81% chance that he is paying.
- A similar situation is with time. The player that prefers only one platform is spending on average 4.18h per week on games. If the user is playing on two platforms, the amount of time spent increases to 8.18h per week. Tri-platform players are spending 11.13h weekly.
- The majority of tri-platform users do prefer consoles (39%). Mobile (30%) and PC (29%) are next.
- There is a regional pattern in platform preferences. North American and Western European users prefer consoles; Eastern European – PC; Asian – Mobile devices.
Skillsearch: 80% of Gaming Industry workers would like to try a 4-day working week
Skillsearch published research covering the working schedule, cost of life attitude, psychological conditions, in the gaming industry.
4 days working week
- 80% of respondents would like at least to try working 4 days per week sometime in the future.
- Only 7% are working or have worked in the studio, which allowed them to have 4 days working week.
Cost of living
- 77% of respondents told about the negative effect of the increasing cost of living. 85% do expect negative changes in the future.
- 62% of workers feel that employers do not support them during the crisis period. 60% are reviewing the salary increase, and 42% are thinking of a job change because of this.
Psychological conditions
- 14% of game industry workers do have neurodiversity (ADHD, dyslexia, autism, dyspraxia) diagnosis.
- 26% of game industry employees do have a diagnosis connected with mental health. In most cases, it’s depression (39.9%) and anxiety (39.7%).
- 63% of workers do tell their employers about their conditions only if it affects their performance.
Game industry salaries
- The average salary in the UK increased to £58k per year.
- The largest average salary is in the US – about £125k per year. Canada is next with £71k per year. In Western Europe the average salary is about £57k; in Eastern Europe – £43.5k.
- The smallest annual average salary is in Africa – about £38k.
Apptica: Mobile Puzzles market in Q1 2023
The data was collected from 1 January to 31 March 2023 in 35 countries.
Top charts
- Royal Match, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes are the top-grossing puzzle games of Q1 2023 on iOS. Leaders on Android are Candy Crush Saga, Royal Match, and Gardenscapes.
- Candy Crush Saga is the leader by revenue from two platforms combined with $156.3M.
- Gardenscapes, Royal Match, Parking Jam 3D are top titles by downloads on iOS. Candy Crush Saga, Thief Puzzle: To pass a Level, Block Blast Adventure Master is leading on Android.
- Candy Crush Saga is also the leader in Q1 2023 by downloads (54.6M installs).
- The top games by advertising on iOS are Royal Match (97,416 creatives – 7.77% of paid traffic); Gardenscapes (4,534 creatives – 5.95% of paid traffic), and Wordscapes (333 creatives – 5.16% of paid traffic). On Android are Matchington Mansion (1,309 creatives – 26.5% of paid traffic), Blockudoku: Block Puzzle Game (2,652 creatives – 6.14% of paid traffic), and Gardenscapes (11,793 creatives – 5.53% of paid traffic). The % of paid traffic is related to all paid traffic in the category.
Category overview
- Puzzles are generating 11.19% of all Android downloads and 19.89% of downloads on iOS.
- Puzzles are responsible for 7.49% of iOS and 13.81% of Android revenues.
- Puzzle games are getting 31.98% of creatives and 37.35% of paid traffic on Android; on iOS it’s 30.15% of creatives and 52.43% of paid traffic.
- The US (14%), India (12%), Brazil (8%), Russia (6%), and Indonesia (5%) are countries in Q1 2023 with the most downloads for Puzzle games.
- The US (46%), Japan (10%), Germany (6%), the UK (6%), and France (5%) are leaders in Q1 2023 by IAP revenue.
- Despite the fact that iOS is getting only 20% of downloads, it’s generating 56% of all Puzzle revenue. Android is getting accordingly 80% of downloads with 44% of revenue.
Subcategories overview
- Match 3 is the leader by downloads (36%) and revenue (65%) in the genre. Trivia, Merge, and Word games are next.
- Match 3 is generating 6% of all mobile genre downloads.
- Regarding revenue, Match 3 shares second place with 4X Strategies (9%). MMORPG is in first place by far (22%).
Circana: The US Gaming Market dropped by 5% in April 2023
- The US gaming market declined by 5% YoY to $4.1B. In the last month, the decrease percentage was the same.
- Software sales decreased by 6% YoY to $3.6B.
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the best-selling game of April; Dead Island 2 is second; MLB: The Show 23 picked third place.
- 7 new titles appeared in the US top-grossing 20. 3 of them are remakes/compilations.
- US citizens’ spending on hardware increased by 7%, reaching $367M. This is a record number since April 2020 ($420M).
- PlayStation 5 is the best-selling console by dollar sales. Nintendo Switch is the leader in number of consoles sold.
- Accessories sales haven’t changed YoY and remained at the $158M level. The black DualSense is the most popular product.
data.ai: State of Mobile Games Revenue 2023
- Mobile apps in 2022 earned $500B+. $167M (33.2%) of them came from the IAP purchases. The rest is from ads.
- Only 35% of $336B of ad revenue was generated by games. However, if we won’t include giants like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Linkedin, and Pinterest – games are responsible for 70% of all ad revenue.
- Users have made purchases of $167B in 2022. 66% of this amount came from games.
- 98% of all game IAP revenue comes from one-time IAP purchases (not subscriptions or recurring purchases).
- App Store is responsible for 50% of all IAP revenue; Google Play – for 27%; 3rd-party Android Store in China – for the remaining 23%.
- Candy Crush Saga, ROBLOX, Coin Master, Royal Match, and Pokemon GO – in top-10 by revenue in the US in 2022.
- 46% of the world’s ad revenue (by all segments) comes from the US. Asia (23%), Europe (19%), Latin America (7%), and MENA (4%) are next.
- Amount of users that are making small purchases (up to $9) increased from 43.7% to 44.5%. The number of mid-purchasers (from $10 to $24) remained the same – 31.5%. Slightly increased the share of purchasers with an amount of $100+ – from 12.3% in Q1 2022 to 13.3% in Q1 2023. The share of purchasers with an average cheque from $25 to $99 decreased from 12.5% to 10.8%.
GSD: Game sales in Europe dropped in April 2023; hardware sales skyrocketed
GSD is reporting only the fact sales numbers were received from partners. Some partners (like Nintendo) are not sharing the digital sales numbers, which might affect the overall picture.
Games
- 10.4M PC and Console game copies were sold in Europe in April 2023. It’s 5.3% less than a year before.
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- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the best-selling game of the month. Its sales are already 6% higher than the lifetime sales of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
- 53% of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor sales came from digital. The predecessor had 35%.
- Dead Island 2 is third, the first two weeks’ sales are by a third lower than Resident Evil 4 Remake had.
Consoles and accessories
- Console sales jumped by 58% compared to April last year.
- PlayStation 5 is showing 144% YoY sales growth. Nintendo Switch sales increased by 38% before The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launch. Xbox Series S|X sales grew by 19%.
- Nintendo Switch strengthened sales numbers not only to the previous year but to March too. Partly – because of the limited console edition branded with a new The Legend of Zelda title.
- Accessories sales grew by 11% YoY in April with more than 1.2M devices being sold. DualSense is still a leader.
