miHoYo mobile titles surpassed $8B in revenue; the Japanese mobile market declined in H1 2023; the US gaming market is showing a positive dynamic for the second consecutive month.
This week:
- Apptica: Mobile gaming market in H1 2023
- AppMagic: miHoYo mobile titles surpassed $8B in revenue
- Sensor Tower: Top Mobile Games by Downloads in June 2023
- Sensor Tower: Japanese mobile market in H1 2023
- data.ai: Users spent 2.5T hours in front of their mobile screens in H1 2023
- PlayStation 5 surpassed 40M sales
- game: The German gaming industry is back to active growth in 2023
- Circana: The US Gaming market in June 2023 grew by 9%
- StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of the Streaming market in June 2023
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Apptica: Mobile gaming market in H1 2023
Revenue
- The US ($5.71B) is the largest market with a 26.61% share. In H1 2023 it increased by 4% by this component compared to H1 2022. Japan is second with $4.17B and 19.43% of the market (+1.2% market share YoY growth). China is third with $3.23B and 15.05% of the market (+2% market share YoY growth). But we traditionally do want to highlight that numbers about China don’t include 3rd-party Android stores.
- Distribution by revenue between iOS and Android – 56.26% to 43,74%.
- RPG suffered the most from the revenue drop. Genre had $5.9B revenue in H1 2022 and received only $4.4B in H1 2023.
- Honor of Kings ($766M); PUBG Mobile ($344M); Genshin Impact ($209M) are leaders by revenue on iOS in H1 2023. Android’s top-grossing titles in H1 2023 were Coin Master ($228M); Candy Crush Saga ($220M), and Roblox ($167M).
- In H1 2023 games were responsible for 51% of overall Stores revenue.
Downloads
- India (4.32B downloads – 15.29% of the overall amount) is the largest market by downloads, which share in H1 2023 increased by 0.9%. Next is Brazil (10.59% – +0.3% YoY growth by market share), the US (9.08%), Russia (6.71% – +0.8% YoY growth by market share), and Indonesia.
- The distribution of downloads between iOS and Android is far from equal – 11.37% to 88.63%.
- In H1 2023 almost all genres drop in downloads compared to H1 2022.
- Eggy Party (32.2M); Royal Match (20.2M); Roblox (19.5M) are top-downloaded games of H1 2023 on iOS. Subway Surfers (116.5M); Candy Crush Saga (106.3M); Garena Free Fire (88M) are Android leaders.
- Games are responsible for 29.6% of overall downloads on iOS and Android.
Advertising
- Number of advertisers in games increased by 22% in a year.
- 8.9M creatives have been created for games – it’s 56% of the overall amount.
AppMagic: miHoYo mobile titles surpassed $8B in revenue
- Genshin Impact generated 73% of the overall revenue for the company on mobile.
- Honkai Impact 3rd brought the company 18% of revenue; Honkai: Star Rail just launched but already generated 6%. The remaining % belongs to Tears of Themis – the most unknown title of miHoYo.
- China (39% of overall revenue); Japan (21%), and the US (15%) are the main markets for miHoYo.
- App Store accounted for 69% of users’ spending; Google Play – for 31%. That’s without 3rd-party Android stores in China.
- miHoYo started its journey in 2011.
Sensor Tower: Top Mobile Games by Downloads in June 2023
- Garena Free Fire is the leader of the month. It’s been downloaded 19M times – 27.9% of them came from India; 12.7% – from Indonesia; 8.1% from Vietnam.
- Subway Surfers is second with 18.5M downloads. Players from India made up 24.2%; from the US – 7.8%; from Brazil – 7.3%.
- Ludo King is a third game by downloads with 18.4M of installs. India is by far first with 83% of overall downloads; Indonesia had 4.9%; Pakistan – 3.1%.
- Undawn from Tencent was the leader in the growth dynamic in June.
- In June 2023 users downloaded 4.44B games. It’s flat compared to the previous month.
- India is the first by overall number of downloads (862M – 19.4% of overall amount); the US is second (8.4%); Brazil is third (8.3%).
Sensor Tower: Japanese mobile market in H1 2023
General numbers
- Mobile games in Japan earned $6.8B in the first half of 2023. It’s 11% lower than a year before.
- iOS revenue drop by 10%; Android decreased by 14%.
- Downloads went down too – to 300M (-6% YoY). The decline is solely of iOS’s underperformance as Android stayed flat.
The most successful titles
- Monster Strike from MIXI is the leader in H1 2023 by revenue. The game earned $350M during this period.
- Uma Musume Pretty Derby was second; its worldwide revenue in March 2023 exceeded $2B.
- 6 games in the top 10 have been released more than 5 years before.
- 7 games in the top 10 are from Japanese publishers.
- Blue Rock Project: World Champion is the best title by downloads in Japan in H1 2023. It’s based on the soccer manga Blue Rock.
Growing projects
- Honkai: Star Rail is the leader in revenue and downloads.
- Victory Goddess: Nikke is second by this parameter.
Most successful publishers
- CyberAgent, Bandai Namco Entertainment, and Square Enix are leaders in the Japanese market by revenue.
- Tencent stepped to the top-10 rating in H1 2023; miHoYo went up by two positions thanks to the great release of Honkai: Star Rail.
data.ai: Users spent 2.5T hours in front of their mobile screens in H1 2023
General numbers
- Leaders by mobile content consumption in H1 2023 on Android are India (580B hours; +26% YoY); China (560B hours; +13% YoY); Indonesia (210B hours; +16% YoY).
- The largest download markets – India, the US, and Brazil – are stagnating. It might be a sign of an excessive amount of offers in the market.
- Downloads in China in H1 2023 increased by 20% while gaming downloads decreased. People haven’t stopped searching for new content, but making choices not in the gaming favor.
- Overall app revenue in H1 2023 on the largest markets is more pessimistic. The US market grew by 4% (to $22B), but the Japanese dropped by 13% (to $8.5B); the Chinese declined by 3% (to $8.4B but without 3rd-party Android stores).
- TikTok outpaced by IAP revenue the most significant mobile games.
Games
- March 2023 is the first year since December 2021, when games showed positive dynamics by revenue growth (+1.5%). Another growing month was May (+3.6%). It’s a bit early to say about the market recovery, but signs are great.
- Honkai: Star Rail made a huge impact on the games market and expected restoration with $230M of revenue in 30 days and 50M downloads in the first 15 days.
- Monopoly GO is another example of a successful launch. 40% of game downloads came from Europe.
PlayStation 5 surpassed 40M sales
- Sony officially announced that PlayStation 5 sales reached the 40M mark since the release.
- The console’s library has more than 2.5k games.
- In a financial report from April, Sony was stating about 38M consoles sold.
- PlayStation 5 sales dynamics are currently 3% above PS4 and 83% better than PS3.
- In the last financial report, Sony stated that software sales declined by 3.5%.
game: The German gaming industry is back to active growth in 2023
- The number of gaming companies in the country increased to 908. It’s 15% more than was in 2022.
- The growth in number of companies since 2020 is 46%.
- Amount of people working in the industry is increasing too. In 2023 the number almost reached 12k which is 7% more than a year before.
- Compared to 2020, the number of game industry employees in Germany increased by 19%.
- Association representatives are pointing out the fact that the number of people employed in the related gaming industry jobs is significantly higher and is reaching 30k people. We’re speaking of workers at media outlets, retail shops, education, and other fields.
Circana: The US Gaming market in June 2023 grew by 9%
- American gamers spent $4.7B on games in June 2023. It’s 9% more than a year before.
- That’s the second-largest June in history. More American users spent only in June 2021 – $4.8B.
Games
- $4.1B are software sales. Growth to the previous year is 7%.
- Diablo IV is the leader by sales in the US; Final Fantasy XVI reached second place; Street Fighter 6 is third.
- Launch sales of Street Fighter 6 are doubling Street Fighter’s V sales.
Hardware
- Hardware spending in the US increased by 22% and surpassed $454M. It’s the highest June mark since June 2008 ($617M).
- PlayStation 5 is a leader in both unit & dollar sales.
- June 2023 sales of PlayStation 5 are impressive: PlayStation performed better in dollar sales in June 2008; by number of units – in June 2010.
- Accessory sales increased by 14% and reached $214M. DualSense is leading.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of the Streaming market in June 2023
- Twitch is growing a little by daily views – in June daily average was 56.919M hours versus 56.901M in May. The difference in the overall amount of hours is because of the fewer days in June.
- In 2020-2022 number of watched hours were dropping from March to June. Growth this year is atypical.
- 76% of watched hours on Twitch in June accounted for leading 10k streamers. It’s 5% of the overall amount of content makers on the platform.
- Diablo IV (first place) and Street Fighter 6 (last place) debuted in the top 10 in June 2023.
- League of Legends (94M watched hours); Grand Theft Auto V (91M watched hours) and Valorant (90M hours) are on top too.
- Diablo IV is one of the most successful launches on Twitch in the last year and a half. The game received 70M watched hours in a launch week. Only Lost Ark (72M hours) and Elden Ring (71M) had better results in 2022-2023.
