General trends
- About 10% of all console releases since 2016 were based on IPs. Since the pandemic, the share of IP-based games increased due to the smaller amount of non-IP releases. IP-based titles tend to have better retention than non-IP games.
- Most IP-based games are made in 4 genres: adventures, fighting, RPG, and shooters.
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History
- The first attempt to make an IP-based game happened in 1982. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial release on Atari 2600 was such a big disaster that the next try was only in 1988 with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
IP-based games market status
- Despite the view that the number of IP-based games is increasing, its amount has been consistent since 2016 – from 180 to 228 releases per year. In 2022 there was even a decline with 150 IP-based games being released.
- On a console market, there are 30-40 IP-based releases per year.
- The share of IP-based games from the overall amount of titles in Steam, App Store, and Google Play is below 2%.
IP games retention
- On April 2023, the average IP-based title has 2.5M gamers’ lifetime, while non-IP based only 1.4M players.
- IP-based titles are better working with the retention of Premium titles since 2020.
- IP-based F2P games are not only better in terms of retention compared to non-IP titles, they even managed to increase the MAU from 2 to 4 million in 2022. Games without transmedia IPs were declining by MAU the whole year.
Most popular IP
- Games based on comics or books IPs are considered the most popular. But even in this case out of 88 analyzed games, only 9 had more than 10M users. 51 titles haven’t surpassed the million thresholds.
- Top-10 most successful IPs based on the number of users are Spider-Man, DC Comics, The Witcher, Batman, Dragon Ball, LEGO Marvel, Jurassic Park, Naruto, Alien, and Monopoly.
