InvestGame shared gaming investment status in Q1 2023; Neogames highlighted the Finnish industry growth; GTA series sales surpassed 400M copies.
This week:
- InvestGame: Gaming Investment Deals Report – Q1 2023
- Newzoo adjusted the Gaming market size in 2022 – it’s dropped worse than expected
- AppMagic: Honkai: Star Rail earned $132.3M in the first month on Mobile
- Neogames: The Finnish Game Industry in 2022
- Nintendo: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sales exceeded 10M copies in the first 3 days
- GTA V sales reached 180M copies
- Sony: PlayStation VR 2 tapped 600k copies in the first 6 weeks
- StreamElements & Stream Charts: New streaming platform Kick Report
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InvestGame: Gaming Investment Deals Report – Q1 2023
- The market is cooling off after the outstanding performance of 2021 and 2022.
Private investments
- The number of private investments increased compared to the previous two quarters. But the overall size of investments decreased – in Q1’23 it was about $1B.
- The majority of deals in Q1’23 have been in the early stages. The largest rounds of the quarter are VSPO ($265M), Believer ($55M), and CCP Games ($40M).
- Of all deals (141), 32 were in product companies in the early stages.
- Two product companies in Q1’23 received a later stages investment – CCP Games and Carry1st.
Corporate investments
- 10 corporate deals happened in Q1’23. The majority of them are of undisclosed amount.
M&A
- In Q1’23 the M&A activity was minor. The number of deals was twice less than a year before.
- The overall size of deals was $0.6B. However, the second quarter will be more prominent – we already know about Savvy Games Group x Scopely and SEGA x Rovio deals.
Public offerings
- 9 public offerings happened in Q1’23 with an overall sum of $0.5B.
- InvestGame experts are sure that the situation won’t be better anytime soon.
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Newzoo adjusted the Gaming market size in 2022 – it’s dropped worse than expected
- The gaming market in 2022 was $182.9B – a 5.1% decline to 2021. The previous estimation was at $184.4B.
- Mobile gaming is responsible for 50% of overall revenue. The PC browser market experienced the largest decline – by 14.8% YoY.
- However, Newzoo analytics do forecast that in 2025 the market will reach $206.4B with a 2.9% CAGR.
- China and the US are 49% of the worldwide gaming market. The only regions with a positive dynamic in 2022 were MENA ($6.8B size – +5.8% YoY growth) and LATAM ($8.4B size – +3.3% YoY growth).
AppMagic: Honkai: Star Rail earned $132.3M in the first month on Mobile
- China is responsible for 34% of the revenue; Japan got 26%; the US generated 15%.
- The game has been downloaded 17.6M times, which resulted in an RpD of $6.48.
- Honkai: Star Rail launched slightly worse than Genshin Impact which had $176.4M of revenue and 21M of downloads.
Neogames: The Finnish Game Industry in 2022
- Finnish companies’ turnover in 2022 reached €3.2M. There are 5 companies in the country now with annual revenue of €100M+.
- 4100 people have been working in the Finnish gaming industry by the end of 2022. Growth of 500 people compared to 2020.
- 650 gaming studios have been open in Finland since 1995. 232 of them are now actively developing new games.
- The median number of employees in Finnish gaming companies is 10 people.
- About 35% of Finnish game industry employees are working remotely.
- Finnish gaming studios expressed a growing interest in PC over the last two years. In 2019-2020, the number of developers for this platform was about 46%; in 2021-2022, it reached 64%. 59% of gaming studios in Finland work on titles for two or more platforms.
Nintendo: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom sales exceeded 10M copies in the first 3 days
- That’s the fastest-selling title in The Legend of Zelda series.
- Japanese players bought 2.24M copies of the title while the North and Latin American gamers bought 4M copies of the game cumulatively.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is sharing the first position now with the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
GTA V sales reached 180M copies
Take-Two in the financial report of 2022 uncovered its leading series sales.
- GTA V sales exceeded 180M copies. Series now have 400M+ copies sold.
- Red Dead Redemption II reached the 53M copies sold mark. The whole series has 75M.
- NBA 2K sold 135M copies.
- Borderlands series sales are 80M copies.
- Games of Sid Meier’s Civilization series have been bought 67M times.
Sony: PlayStation VR 2 tapped 600k copies in the first 6 weeks
- PS VR 2 starting sales (first 6 weeks) are 8% higher than the original PS VR had.
- However, the sales dynamic of the first PS VR was better – it had stable sales after the first-week push, while PS VR 2 sales slowed down after 3-4 weeks.
- Sony plans to increase investments in the new IP development for PS VR 2.
StreamElements & Stream Charts: New streaming platform Kick Report
Kick is a recently launched competitor to Twitch, YouTube Live, and Facebook Live. The platform is currently in the beta stage and the main difference is in increased payments to the content creators.
- In April 2023 the number of hours watched on platforms reached 51.8M. The increase to the previous year was about 44%.
- Amount of active channels increased from 23.9k in March 2023 to 66.9k in April 2023.
- Chatting and slots (casino) streams are gathering the majority of hours watched on the platform. However, games took half of the chart with GTA RP (2.6M hours); Fortnite (1.8M hours); Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 (1.8M hours); Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (963k hours), Apex Legends (771k hours) being on top 10.
