miHoYo is earning more than Activision Blizzard, EA, Embracer Group, Take-Two, and Ubisoft; Diablo IV is the most successful launch in Blizzard Entertainment history; Game subscription revenue growth almost stopped. And much more!
This week:
- Yicai Global: 80% revenue of top-10 gaming public companies in China in Q1 2023 is generated by Tencent and NetEase
- Guangming Daily: miHoYo in 2022 earned more than Activision Blizzard, EA, Embracer Group, Take-Two, and Ubisoft
- GSD: Game sales in Europe in May 2023 increased by 33%
- The GameDiscoverCo: Genshin Impact on PlayStation has 400k DAU
- Diablo IV is the most successful launch in Blizzard Entertainment’s history
- Sensor Tower: PUBG Mobile earned $10B
- Circana: Game subscriptions revenue growth in the US almost stopped
- AppMagic: Genshin Impact in May 2023 showed the worst revenue on Mobile since the launch
- The GameDiscoverCo: Rating of games from E3 2023 show replacements
- AppMagic: Top Mobile Games of May 2023 by Revenue and Downloads
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Yicai Global: 80% revenue of top-10 gaming public companies in China in Q1 2023 is generated by Tencent and NetEase
Yicai Global considered the results of the 10 largest public gaming companies in China in Q1 2023.
- 7 out of the 10 largest mobile titles of Q1 2023 have been released by Tencent and NetEase.
- Tencent in Q1 2023 was dominating the local market with about 50% share.
- The operating revenue of Tencent in Q1 2023 increased by 11%; NetEase is close with 7.6% growth.
Guangming Daily: miHoYo in 2022 earned more than Activision Blizzard, EA, Embracer Group, Take-Two, and Ubisoft
miHoYo is a private company, however, Chinese reporters got access to the company’s financial statements.
- In 2022 authors of Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail received $3.84B in revenue with a net profit of $2.27B.
- In the same period, the net profit of Activision Blizzard was $1.51B; EA – $802M; Embracer Group – $417M. Take-Two finished the year with a net loss of $1.12B; Ubisoft is in minus for $532.2M.
- From the companies above, Embracer Group ($3.52B) and Ubisoft ($1.95B) had smaller revenue than miHoYo.
[GameDev Reports] It’s important to mention, that approaches to calculating the net profit at miHoYo might be different from publicly traded companies.
GSD: Game sales in Europe in May 2023 increased by 33%
GSD is reporting only the fact sales numbers were received from partners. There are partners (like Nintendo), who are not sharing the digital sales numbers, which might affect the overall picture.
Games
- 10.6M game copies have been sold in Europe in May this year. It’s 33% more than in May 2022.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was the main growth driver. Its sales are 2.5x higher than Hogwarts Legacy’s which was the second.
- After 3 weeks of sales, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is losing only to FIFA 23 and Hogwarts Legacy in terms of overall sales numbers. Without digital sales. If we compare retail sales only, the game is already #1 in Europe.
- Hogwarts Legacy sales increased by 321% to the previous month thanks to the release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. 71.5% of the game sales in May came from the PS4; 11.7% – from Xbox One.
- The only new game in top-20 by sales in May was LEGO 2K Drive.
Hardware and accessories
- 429k consoles were sold in Europe in May, 40% more than a year before. Numbers are without Germany and the UK.
- Nintendo Switch outperformed PS5 in sales in May. Amid The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom release sales went up by 39% compared to the previous year.
- PlayStation 5 sales increased by 81% compared with May 2022.
- Xbox Series S|X not feeling great. Console sales decreased by 16% to the previous year.
- 1.3M accessories have been sold in May (+30% YoY). DualSense continues to lead.
The GameDiscoverCo: Genshin Impact on PlayStation has 400k DAU
- The monthly audience of the title on PlayStation consoles is about 2.1M people.
- miHoYo is currently working on the PlayStation release of its new title – Honkai: Star Rail.
Diablo IV is the most successful launch in Blizzard Entertainment’s history
- The game earned $666M in the first 5 days of sales.
- The company also set a record for pre-sales on both PC and Consoles.
- Players spent in first 5 days more than 276M hours in the game. It’s been more than 30 thousand years.
- Diablo IV is the most popular game among all Blizzard Entertainment titles by the number of hours watched on Twitch in the first 10 days.
Sensor Tower: PUBG Mobile earned $10B
- Only Honor of Kings received more revenue worldwide.
- The last billion PUBG Mobile earned in half a year. The report of $9B revenue was released in December 2022.
- 60.3% of PUBG Mobile’s revenue came from China. The US is responsible for 10.7%; Japan – for 3.7%.
- The majority of downloads are from India (21.8% of the overall amount). China (14.3%) and the US (5.9%) are next.
Circana: Game subscriptions revenue growth in the US almost stopped
- The revenue from gaming subscriptions in April 2023 was just 2% higher than a year before.
- Mat Piscatella, the executive director of Circana, is connecting it with problems of finding a new audience willing to pay.
- Mat also claims that traditional game releases in 2023 showed a great performance, especially strong digital sales.
- His words are supported by Sony reports. The number of PS Plus subscribers is stagnating at a level of 46-47M users in the last two years.
Microsoft last time reported about 25M Xbox Game Pass subscribers in January 2022. In October 2022 in the UK court, Sony told about 29M subscribers of the service.
AppMagic: Genshin Impact in May 2023 showed the worst revenue on Mobile since the launch
- Based on AppMagic data, the game earned $53.9M in May 2023. It’s the lowest number since the release.
- The previous anti-record was set in June 2021 – the game earned $65.6M back then.
AppMagic also launched their podcast with a first guest – Daniel Ahmad. They discussed trends, which genres grew despite the market decline, and how studios can benefit from the current macroeconomic situation.
- The drop in revenue might’ve happened due to two reasons. The first is the underperformance of the Baizhu banner, which made only $1.9M in China on iOS while the previous banner made $8M. The second is the release of Honkai: Star Rail, which might’ve attracted some of the audience.
The GameDiscoverCo: Rating of games from E3 2023 show replacements
Rating by number of increased Steam followers
- Starfield, PayDay 3, and Cities Skylines 2 are leaders by the number of subscribers growth after recent shows.
- If we’ll check the median increase, Xbox Show is leading by efficiency (+1,250 followers on median), Summer Game Fest is second (+678 followers), and PC Gaming Show is third (+487 followers).
It’s important to mention that some titles – like PlayStation exclusives – are unavailable on Steam.
Rating by media coverage
- Starfield was presented at the Xbox show and is the leader among all games, with 1,106 articles across different media outlets.
- Cyberpunk 2077: The Phantom Liberty is second (600 articles), and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is third (550 articles).
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games of May 2023 by Revenue and Downloads
Revenue
- Honkai: Star Rail is the top-grossing game of the month with $116.6M in revenue.
- Honor of Kings on unusual second place. The last time it happened was in December 2022 when Genshin Impact took the lead.
- Night Crows is the new title in the top 10 of Android revenue. This is the MMORPG from Wemade, which is currently launched only in South Korea. In May the game earned $23.1M.
Downloads
- Subway Surfers, Roblox, and Candy Crush Saga are world leaders in downloads.
- The only newcomer in the downloads chart is Car Driving School: Car Games. The game from Pakistan-based Spark Game Studios has been downloaded 15.1M times. Considering the release date in September 2019, this is a wonder.
