Sony leaked how Call of Duty is important for the brand.& how their AAA hits cost; the US market grow in May thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom; South Korea is the largest market for FIFA mobile games.
This week:
- Mini-games in WeChat have 400M+ MAU
- Sensor Tower: FIFA Mobile reached $1B in revenue; South Korea is the largest mobile FIFA market
- KOCCA: In 2022 the South Korean gaming market revenue was $16.4B
- StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of game streaming market in May 2023
- Capcom world sales reached 500M copies
- Circana: The US gaming market grew in May thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- The Last of Us: Part II & Horizon Forbidden West development cost Sony more than $200M each
- Sony: Call of Duty franchise brought PlayStation $800M in the US in 2021
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Mini-games in WeChat have 400M+ MAU
- The overall number of users on the platform exceeded 1B people.
- Currently, more than 300k teams are working on games on WeChat. More than half of them are teams of 30 people or less.
Sensor Tower: FIFA Mobile reached $1B in revenue; South Korea is the largest mobile FIFA market
- FIFA Mobile was going to the first billion since October 2016. 26.5% of revenue were coming from China; 15.1% – from South Korea; 14.5% – from the US; 4.5% – from the UK; 4.3% – from Germany, and 3.2% – from Japan.
- It’s worth noting that FIFA Mobile was launched only on the South Korean market in June 2020. Despite this, the country made a significant contribution to the overall sales. In fact, South Korea generated 22.1% of overall revenue since the game was released in the country.
- FIFA Mobile downloads on the Korean market are growing. The vast spikes happened during the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.
- Along with FIFA Mobile, the market also has FIFA Online 4M. On the South Korean market both games are operated by Nexon, their cumulative sales reached $530M. This makes South Korea the largest market for mobile FIFA in the world.
KOCCA: In 2022 the South Korean gaming market revenue was $16.4B
- It’s only 0.9% more than in 2021. Modest growth analysts are connecting with the economic recession and the cancellation of pandemic restrictions.
- South Korean companies earned overseas $8.97B. It’s 67.4% of the overall revenue of all creative industries in the country, including films, music, etc.
- 81.6k people worked in South Korean gaming companies at the end of 2022. It’s 225 people less than in 2021.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of game streaming market in May 2023
- The number of views on Twitch in May 2023 reached 1.764B hours. Analysts highlighted that the streaming market returned to growth.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom reached the #10 place in the chart.
- League of Legends (124M hours), Valorant (102M hours), and GTA V (94M hours) are the most popular games among viewers.
- Gaming content accounts for about 76% of all views on streaming platforms. It’s the same as in 2022, meaning audience preferences are stable.
Capcom world sales reached 500M copies
- Resident Evil has an overall sale of 142M copies. The latest Resident Evil 4 Remake already reached 4M units.
- Monster Hunter games were bought 92M times. The series launched in 2004.
- Iconic (but niche) Street Fighter has 49M overall sales, the first game was released in 1987. Street Fighter 6 reached the first million copies in a week before release.
- Capcom released 307 titles in 230 countries within its 40 years of history.
Circana: The US gaming market grew in May thanks to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- American users spent $4B in May on games. It’s 12% higher than a year before.
Games
- Software sales reached $3.6B with a 9% YoY growth.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom took a solid first place in sales. Despite the fact that Nintendo is not sharing digital sales.
- Hogwarts Legacy and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is the second and third games by sale.
Hardware and accessories
- Hardware sales increased by 56% YoY and reached $338M. It’s a 15 years record.
- The last time people spent more on gaming hardware ($427M) was in 2008.
- Nintendo Switch is the month leader by dollar sales. The console also set a historical record in this term in May.
- Accessory sales increased by 14% YoY to $159M. DualSense is a leader.
The Last of Us: Part II & Horizon Forbidden West development cost Sony more than $200M each
Numbers were published after documents from the FTC Microsoft-AB hearing went live.
- The Last of Us: Part II development cost $220M. At peak, more than 200 people worked on the title.
- Horizon Forbidden West had a budget of $212M. The number of employees were reaching 300 people.
Sony: Call of Duty franchise brought PlayStation $800M in the US in 2021
Poorly scanned documents from the FTC hearings provided more data on the PlayStation business.
- Sony claims that the direct revenue from the Call of Duty series on PlayStation in 2021 was $1.5B. The US was responsible for $800M of this amount.
- If we will count users who played Call of Duty, revenue from them is somewhere between $13.9B and $15.9B.
- Sony still has exclusive marketing rights for one Call of Duty game that will launch in 2023.
- 43M users played Call of Duty games on PlayStation in the US since 2019. It’s two third of the overall audience in the region.
- About a million US PlayStation users are playing only Call of Duty.
- In 2021 internal games from PlayStation studios brought 14% of all sales (but this number might be false, as it’s not clearly visible in the document.
- Sony’s margin from third-party sales on the platform is around 10%.
