Baldur’s Gate III is breaking engagement records; AppMagic shared top mobile games by revenue and downloads in July 2023; Simon Carless (GameDiscoverCo) released a study about the share of top games in CCU/DAU on PC & Consoles.
This week:
- AppMagic: Top Games by Revenue & Downloads in July 2023
- Newzoo: Diversity and representation are becoming increasingly important for the gaming audience
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the highest-grossing among game adaptations
- Famitsu: Game and Console Sales in Japan in July 2023
- StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of the Streaming Market in July 2023
- Sensor Tower: Royal Match! has reached $1.2 billion in global revenue
- Circana: American players spent over 5 hours a day playing Baldur’s Gate III on weekends
- Game Data Library: PlayStation 5 sales trend in Japan outpaces PS4 and PS3
- GamesIndustry.biz & IIDEA: The Video Game Industry and Market of Italy in 2022
- War Robots surpass 250 million users
- AppMagic: Melsoft Games’ titles surpass $1 billion
- Simon Carless (GameDiscoverCo): Study of the share of top games on PC and consoles
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AppMagic: Top Games by Revenue & Downloads in July 2023
Revenue
- Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, and Royal Match are leaders in global revenue.
- Justice Mobile by NetEase jumped to 7th in the global ranking. The game earned $63.3 million in July, exclusively on iOS and only in China (meaning the actual revenue figure is higher due to alternative Android stores). Justice Mobile utilizes AI to generate unique NPC reactions to player actions.
Downloads
- Roblox, Subway Surfers, and Royal Match took the lead in July for downloads.
- Burger Please! entered the top 10 charts despite its release in February of this year. The game was downloaded 13.9 million times in July (with 11.7 million downloads on Google Play and 1.1 million on the App Store).
- Noteworthy is also the release of Yulgang (Scions of Fate). In July, the game was downloaded 7.9 million times (only in China) – securing first place. Interestingly, the game is a port of a Korean MMORPG from 2004.
Newzoo: Diversity and representation are becoming increasingly important for the gaming audience
- 64% of players are certain that diversity in games matters. The younger the players, the more prevalent this opinion is.
- 62% of players believe that they (their gender, race, age, etc.) are well represented in games. However, older generations face challenges in this aspect – for example, only 35% of baby boomers feel that there are characters in games resembling them.
- 57% of players do not engage in games that are “not meant for them.” Considering the vague wording of the question, this might relate to both representation in these games and genre preferences.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the highest-grossing among game adaptations
- And it’s second among all animated movies in general.
- The animated movie “The Super Mario Bros.” earned $1.35 billion. It was watched by 168.1 million people.
Famitsu: Game and Console Sales in Japan in July 2023
Famitsu only takes into account retail sales.
Games
- Nintendo – the leader in game sales at retail in Japan. In July, the company sold 947 thousand copies of games.
- The sales leader – Pikmin 4, the game sold 518 thousand copies in July. Within 10 days of its release, the game had already reached 80% of all Pikmin 3 sales.
- In second place is Square Enix (109 thousand copies); in third place is Spike Chunsoft (101 thousand).
- Nintendo owns 55% of the Japanese gaming retail market. Square Enix – 6.4%; Spike Chunsoft in July – 6%.
Hardware
- In July 2023, Nintendo Switch crossed the 30 million mark for consoles sold in the local market. 407 thousand consoles were sold in July.
- For the PlayStation 5, the results for July are more modest – 243 thousand consoles. Sony’s system has a total of 4 million sales in the domestic market.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: State of the Streaming Market in July 2023
- Twitch has been growing in daily views for 5 consecutive months – the best performance in 4 years of observation.
- In July, the platform had 57.312 million hours of content viewed daily; and overall for the month, the total viewing hours reached 1.777 billion.
- Teamfight Tactics reached the 7th position on the viewing chart. The game accumulated 41 million hours of views in July.
- The leaders remain the same – Grand Theft Auto V (139 million hours); League of Legends (108 million hours); Valorant (88 million hours).
Sensor Tower: Royal Match! has reached $1.2 billion in global revenue
- The USA is the primary market for the game (58%); Japan is in second place (6%); the United Kingdom is third (5%).
- In Japan, Royal Match experienced sharp growth in the second quarter of 2023 in terms of both downloads (+580%) and revenue (+250%).
- Royal Match is the most successful puzzle game in Japan, surpassing Gardenscapes, Homescapes, and other hits by several times. In terms of Monthly Active Users (MAU), the game outperforms Gardenscapes by two times.
- Royal Match has better retention rates than its competitors at 7 and 90 days. Between days 14 and 60, its retention is only surpassed by Homescapes.
Circana: American players spent over 5 hours a day playing Baldur’s Gate III on weekends
The calculation methodology takes into account the total number of minutes played by users and divides it by the number of active users on a specific day.
- During the weekends, Americans played Baldur’s Gate III for nearly 350 minutes per day. On weekdays, players spent 260-280 minutes per day in the game.
- For comparison, Remnant II’s engagement rate in the USA on weekends stands at around 200 minutes per day. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s metrics are at 150 minutes per day.
- Baldur’s Gate III is currently the best-selling game on Steam in the past couple of weeks. The game has also managed to become the highest-rated game of this year.
Game Data Library: PlayStation 5 sales trend in Japan outpaces PS4 and PS3
- PS5 reached the milestone of 4 million sales in Japan within 142 weeks. It took PS4 150 weeks to achieve this result, and PS3 took 162 weeks.
- However, the sales trend significantly lags behind PlayStation 2 (which took 64 weeks to reach 4 million) and the original PlayStation (73 weeks).
- The fastest to reach the 4 million mark in Japan was Game Boy Advance, which accomplished it in 41 weeks.
- Currently, PlayStation 5 ranks 13th in terms of sales trends in Japan, being surpassed by systems like Famicom and SEGA Saturn.
- The indisputable sales leader in Japan is Nintendo DS, with 19 million consoles sold within 142 weeks.
GamesIndustry.biz & IIDEA: The Video Game Industry and Market of Italy in 2022
Industry
- 84% of companies are working on games for PC; 54% – on mobile projects; 38% – on console games.
- In Italy, only 22% of gaming companies earn more than €500,000 per year. 26% fall within the range of €100,000 to €500,000. The rest earn less.
- In 2022, Italy had over 2,400 employees in the gaming industry. This is a 50% increase compared to 2021.
- 24% of the workforce in Italy’s gaming industry are women.
Market
- 11.5 million games were sold in Italy on PC and consoles in 2022. There was no growth compared to 2021.
- As of July 2023, the Italian market shows a 4% growth compared to the previous year. Already, 5.8 million games have been sold.
- €287 million was spent on consoles in 2022, 10% less than in 2021.
- In 2023, the situation looks much better – console sales have grown by 104%. PS5 sales have soared by 283% compared to the previous year. However, Nintendo Switch sales have fallen by 8%, and Xbox Series S|X sales by 23%.
Audience
- 14.2 million Italians (32% of the population) played games in 2022. 81% of them were over 18 years old.
- The average age of gamers in Italy is 30 years.
- 42% of Italian gamers are women.
Top Games
- FIFA 23 – the leading game in Italy in 2022. It remains in second place in 2023, slightly behind Hogwarts Legacy. FIFA 22 takes the third spot.
- In between them in 2022, on the second spot, was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II.
War Robots surpass 250 million users
- In April 2023, the game reached a milestone of $750 million in revenue.
- In 2022, over 30 million new players joined the game, marking a 40% growth compared to 2021.
- A significant portion of downloads comes from the USA. The game is also growing in India and Mexico (almost 7.5% of the total Android revenue comes from this country).
AppMagic: Melsoft Games’ titles surpass $1 billion
- Family Island contributes to 70% of the total revenue. My Cafe accounts for 28%. The remaining 2% of revenue is distributed among the studio’s other 14 games.
- 39% of the revenue comes from the United States. Germany and Japan account for 6% each. Following closely are the United Kingdom and France (5% each).
- 58% of the company’s total revenue comes from Google Play; App Store is responsible for 42% of all earnings.
Simon Carless (GameDiscoverCo): Study of the share of top games on PC and consoles
Data from August 11, 2023.
Steam
- 48.4% of the daily CCU (Concurrent Current Users) is attributed to the top 10 games on Steam.
- The top 10 at the time of writing looks like this: CS: GO, DOTA 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Apex Legends, Grand Theft Auto V, Rust, Team Fortress 2, Naraka: Bladepoint, and War Thunder. 70% are free-to-play games.
- The top 50 games account for 70% of the total CCU. And the top 1000 games cover 94.7% of the platform’s total CCU.
There is no open information about CCU on consoles, so Simon used his own estimation based on DAU (Daily Active Users).
Xbox
- The situation on Xbox is similar. The top 10 projects account for 46.1% of the DAU; for the top 50, it’s 70.5%.
- The top 10 games on Xbox by DAU are Minecraft (including the PC version’s DAU), Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (including Warzone), FIFA 23, Roblox, GTA V, Rocket League, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Forza Horizon 5, and Apex Legends.
PlayStation
- On PlayStation, the “heavyweights” have a slight advantage, with the top 10 games accounting for 52.5% of the DAU. For the top 50, it’s 76.1%.
- The top 10 on the platform includes Fortnite, FIFA 23, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II (including Warzone), Grand Theft Auto V, Rocket League, NBA 2K23, Minecraft, Apex Legends, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, and Overwatch 2.
- The DAU of leaders on PlayStation is higher. For example, the Fortnite audience is more than 3 times larger, and FIFA 23 is 4.4 times larger.
- Overall, the competition for players on PlayStation is slightly tougher than on Xbox, despite having a larger audience.
