Microsoft revealed Xbox sales for the first time in years; Tencent is the largest publisher of 2022; Liftoff & GameRefinery posted a great report about mid-core titles in 2023 with numbers.
This week:
- GameRefinery & Liftoff: Mid-core games in 2023
- AppMagic: Top Games by Revenue & Downloads in June 2023
- data.ai: Tencent is the most successful publisher of 2022
- Square Enix: Final Fantasy XVI sold more than 3M copies in less than a week
- SGDA: Slovak game industry turnover dropped to €77.1M in 2022
- Microsoft reported about 21M+ sold Xbox Series S|X
Subscribe to the GameDev Reports newsletter to receive gaming market updates every day.
GameRefinery & Liftoff: Mid-core games in 2023
CPI & ROI numbers have been collected from 1 May 2022 to 1 May 2023. Analysts covered 30B impressions, 1.1B clicks, and 5.5M installs.
- Liftoff considers shooting games, strategy titles, and RPGs as mid-core games.
- Midcore games earned 35% of overall mobile revenue on iOS in the US.
Overall numbers
- The average CPI of mid-core titles is at the level of $2.03. On Android it’s $0.73; on iOS – $3.86. Analysts note that traffic for mid-core titles is twice as expensive compared to casual games.
- An average D7 ROAS in mid-core games is 4.3%. On Android, it’s better – 6.1% while on iOS it’s lower – 3.4%.
- D7 ROAS from July 2022 to May 2023 was between 3.1% and 6.3%.
- In the last twelve months, the peak month by an average install price was in August 2022 – $2.81. The lowest one was in October 2022 – $1.66.
Benchmarks by markets
- The largest CPI is in North America – $5.45. In APAC it’s $1.37; in EMEA – $0.8; in LATAM – $0.27.
- However, D7 ROAS in North America is the best too – 4.5%. EMEA is next with 4.4%; APAC has 2.6%, and LATAM is behind with 1.5%. Based on the acquisition price and return ratio, EMEA is the best option to start marketing activities.
Benchmarks by genres
- CPI in shooters is $7.47. That’s a leader with a great margin. CPI in strategy titles is $2.77; in RPG – $0.6.
- D7 ROAS in shooters is 6%; in strategy titles – 5.4%; in RPG – 1.7%.
Trends
- Extraction shooters are becoming a new trend. Arena Breakout is the most popular new game and third among all shooters in China.
- More mid-core games are adding additional monetization layer in the form of event passes.
- Some mid-core games are adding a shop with a special currency inside the Battle Passes.
- A lot of mid-core titles opened off-store web shops to avoid paying commissions.
AppMagic: Top Games by Revenue & Downloads in June 2023
Revenue
- Honor of Kings is back on top. Honkai: Star Rail dropped to the second position.
- Monopoly GO! reached 9 places on the Android chart. The game earned $34.7M in June on both platforms. And revenue continues to increase despite declining installs.
Downloads
- FPS Online Strike: PVP Shooter made it 9th place on the Android chart by downloads. That’s a multiplayer shooter of… fair to say, mediocre quality by the current standards. However, the game reached 9.4M installs in June. How? Ask developers.
- Racing Master from NetEase in June reached 3.4M downloads on iOS with $7.2M in revenue.
data.ai: Tencent is the most successful publisher of 2022
- There are 5 gaming companies in the top 10 worldwide. Tencent is leading.
- Besides 5 gaming companies, Tencent, ByteDance, and Disney are in the top 10. They do have both gaming and non-gaming apps.
- Playrix, Playtika, and Moon Active are leaders of the EMEA region by revenue in 2022.
- Tencent, ByteDance, NetEase, and Netmarble are leaders in the APAC region by revenue.
- Activision Blizzard, Take-Two Interactive & Roblox are the most successful gaming publishers of 2022 by revenue from the AMER region.
Square Enix: Final Fantasy XVI sold more than 3M copies in less than a week
- The company is counting both digital and physical sales.
- The sales dynamics of a new title are lower than Final Fantasy XV’s. The previous installment reached 5M copies on the first day. However, FF XV was released on PS4 and Xbox One, while FF XVI is now a console exclusive to PlayStation 5.
SGDA: Slovak game industry turnover dropped to €77.1M in 2022
- In 2021 Slovak gaming companies earned €80M.
- 10% of most successful companies earned €65.3M. Their share in overall revenue dropped by 2% compared to the previous year.
- By the end of 2022, there were 66 gaming companies and 1080 gaming professionals in Slovakia.
- Pixel Federation, QORPO, PowerPlay Studio, SuperScale, and Inlogic Software are leaders by number of employees.
- Slovak developers released 49 titles in 2022. 168 games were created in collaboration with partners.
- 72.7% of developers are working on PC titles. 31.8% are developing games for mobile.
- Worth mentioning that 65.2% of Slovak gaming studios are self-funded.
Microsoft reported about 21M+ sold Xbox Series S|X
The company showed new numbers during the BIG Festival in Brazil.
- Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X sales reached 79M, which means that the company finished the previous generation with 58M in sales.
- For comparison, the main competitor – PlayStation 4 – had 117M sales last generation. This April Sony announced 38M sales of PlayStation 5.
- Microsoft marks that 48% of Xbox Series S users have bought the Xbox console for the first time.
