Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: June 10 - June 14 (2024)
Asia & MENA are almost half of the global gaming market; layoffs are hitting the market hard; 3/4 of Russians pirate games.
Reports of the week:
Niko Partners: Asia and MENA Game Markets accounted for 46.5% of the Global Market in 2023
Newzoo: How Women play Games in 2024
Games & Numbers (29.05.24 - 11.06.24)
XYZ School: 74% of Russian Gamers are pirating games
VG Insights: Fallout TV Series generated over $80M in Incremental Revenue for Bethesda
Fandom: People and Games in 2024
GlobalData: The Cloud Gaming Segment Will Grow 7 Times by 2030
There have already been more layoffs in 2024 than in 2023
GSD & GfK: V Rising Leads the UK Market in May 2024
Niko Partners: Asia and MENA Game Markets accounted for 46.5% of the Global Market in 2023
Niko Partners tracks 13 markets in the regions. East Asia includes Japan and South Korea. SEA-6 includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. MENA-3 includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. India and China are counted separately.
In 2023, the volume of the aforementioned markets reached $85.5 billion. This is 46.5% of the total industry size ($183.7 billion).
It is expected that by 2028, the market volume of these countries will reach $97.1 billion. The fastest growth will be in India (+11.1% CAGR); MENA-3 (+8.3% CAGR) and SEA-6 (+6.7% CAGR).
In 2024, the following revenue distribution among the analysed regions is expected: China - 56.9%; East Asia - 33.4%; SEA-6 - 6.3%; MENA-3 - 2.4%; India - 1.1%.
In these countries in 2023, there were 1.6 billion players. By 2028, the number will grow to 2 billion. The fastest growth will be in India (+10% CAGR); MENA-3 (+4.1% CAGR) and SEA-6 (+3.7% CAGR).
Among the 13 countries, China is expected to have 42.9% of all players in 2024; India - 30.2%; SEA-6 - 17%; East Asia - 5.8%; MENA-3 - 4.2%.
In 2023, Asia and the MENA regions accounted for 57.8% of the total mobile gaming revenue.
These regions accounted for 50.4% of the global PC market in 2023.
Niko Partners notes that their latest research signals an increase in gaming activity in Asia - the number of hours spent gaming increased by 36.2% YoY. There is a recovery after a 10% decline in 2023.
In the reporting markets, in 2023, 93.7% of users played on mobile devices; 35.1% on PC; and 4.9% on consoles. By 2028, these 13 countries are expected to have 1.87 billion mobile players; 606 million PC gamers and 100 million console players.
Newzoo: How Women play Games in 2024
72% of all female online population play games. For males, this figure is 81%.
45% of all gamers are female. Half of these women actively spend money on games.
36% of women who play games consider themselves gamers.
Only 23% of female consider themselves hardcore gamers. The majority (44%) identify as casual players.
There is a correlation based on the platform used. Among women who play on mobile devices, more identify as casual players. On PCs and consoles, both women and men more often identify as midcore and hardcore gamers.
44% of female gamers play games exclusively on mobile devices. Among men, only 27% play exclusively on mobile devices.
Only 18% of women play sports games, even though this genre is the 4th most popular among men.
Games & Numbers (29.05.24 - 11.06.24)
PC/Console Games
Star Citizen fundraising has surpassed $700 million, with more than 5.2 million donations. In August 2023, the news broke that $600 million had been raised.
Blizzard Entertainment boasted that over 100 million people have played games from the Diablo series.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 sales have reached 3 million copies. The first 2.5 million copies were sold within 2 weeks of release (the game was released on March 22 this year).
Content Warning has sold 2.2 million copies in 2 months. The total number of players has exceeded 8.8 million (the game was initially distributed for free).
Marvel Rivals already has over a million wishlists on Steam and EGS.
The Octopath Traveler series has surpassed 4 million copies sold. Both parts of the game were recently launched on Xbox Game Pass.
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Songs of Conquest has sold 500 million copies. The game was released in early access on May 10, 2022, and recently had a full release.
Hypercharge: Unboxed sold over 50,000 copies in its first week of sales on Xbox.
The retro game portable console Evercade reported selling its millionth cartridge. It took the company 4 years to achieve this.
Fallout 76 has reached 20 million users. In December last year, the number of players was 17 million. The DAU for Fallout games has soared by 600% following the success of the TV series. Todd Howard said he had never seen such a growth before.
MultiVersus successfully returned to Steam with 153,000 concurrent users at launch. Now, the CCU has stabilized at 17,000.
The free Silent Hill: The Short Message has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times.
Mobile Games
Rise of Kingdoms revenue has exceeded $3.5 billion. 25.6% of all money came from the USA; 14.4% from China; 12.6% from South Korea. South Korea is the leader in RPD (revenue per download) ($142) and ARPDAU (average revenue per daily active user) ($5). Following are China (RPD - $6; ARPDAU - $4.6) and the USA (RPD - $62; ARPDAU - $3.3).
Dungeon & Fighter Mobile successfully launched in China. In the first week starting from May 21, the game earned $66 million on iOS alone, and revenue from both platforms exceeded $140 million (according to Niko Partners); the game was downloaded by 2.4 million users. In South Korea, the game has been available since March 2022, and in just over two years, it has earned more than $185.6 million.
Squad Busters earned $1.1 million on its first day (data from Sensor Tower). On the same day, the game was downloaded 8.8 million times. According to AppMagic, in the first week, the game earned $10.66 million (excluding platform fees and taxes). Yet, Eric Seufert doesn't believe those numbers are real pointing out that Squad Busters had 40M+ pre-regs.
XYZ School: 74% of Russian Gamers are pirating games
Only in the first quarter of 2024, people downloaded content for free worth 118B roubles ($1.32 billion). This is more than double the amount spent on licensed content during the same period.
On average, a pirate downloaded games worth 6,800 rubles ($76) per quarter. 54% of users downloaded no more than 3 copies of games.
❗️ Experts attribute the increase in piracy to the exit of Western companies from the Russian market and the unavailability of purchases using Russian cards. For many users, piracy is a “response” to publishers who do not want to take their money.
Meanwhile, legally, in the first quarter of 2024, Russian users purchased goods worth 49 billion rubles ($0.55 billion). Helldivers II, Baldur’s Gate II, and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader are leading charts.
The marketplace Ozon reported that year-on-year sales of gaming products in Russia grew by 71% in the first quarter of 2024.
❗️ Some purchases are in a grey area and are not visible to analysts, as Russian users actively buy games on Steam from other regions (Kazakstan, Türkiye); in the PS Store - in Türkiye; on Xbox - in Argentina.
VG Insights: Fallout TV Series generated over $80M in Incremental Revenue for Bethesda
VGI analysts have calculated the growth of gaming metrics for the Fallout series and forecasted a tail until September (in their opinion, the situation will stabilize by then). Fallout Shelter was not included in the analysis.
It is expected that after the series' release, Bethesda will sell additionally two million copies of Fallout 4 and 1-1.5 million copies of Fallout 76. This translates to $35-40 million in revenue after platform fees.
The daily active users (DAU) in Fallout 76 increased from 100-200 thousand users to over 1 million after the series' release. VGI analysts expect this to bring Bethesda an additional $10-15 million. However, they note that the new audience is more casual, which means the average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU) will be lower.
VGI estimates the IP licensing deal with Amazon at $30 million, drawing parallels with The Lord of the Rings licensing.
❗️ Here, I would refrain from making any assumptions.
VGI estimates the total economic impact of the series' release on Bethesda's gaming products to be $80 million. Including license fees, which size we do not know.
To understand the influence, Fallout 4 sold copies worth $750 million on the first day after release. Over its lifetime, it has earned around $1.5 billion on all platforms. Thus, the TV series release impacted game sales by 1.5% of the total amount. Here we’re speaking of Fallout 4 only.
Fandom: People and Games in 2024
The research is based on a survey of more than 5,000 participants from around the world. It is important to note that the Fandom audience is already engaged with games.
54% of users play games to relax; 46% to create something new and express themselves; 40% to achieve new goals.
The "creative" motivation has grown the most over the past year—by 10%. People have started to pay more attention to this aspect (or the generations of players for whom this is important have begun to participate in such surveys).
Fandom identifies three factors in games that affect user engagement: personalization, large open worlds, and constant updates. Games with at least one of these components make up 78% of the top 50 projects on Fandom. They have 60% more engagement than projects without these features.
❗️ Fandom is a service for creating Wiki pages for games and more.
80% of people note that their gaming personality differs from their real-life one. 64% believe that it's easier to be themselves in games.
Meanwhile, 32% of respondents note that they would like to better reflect their virtual self in real life.
GlobalData: The Cloud Gaming Segment Will Grow 7 Times by 2030
In 2023, only 6% of gamers worldwide were subscribed to cloud gaming services. The market size was estimated by the company at $3 billion, and the user base at 184 million users.
❗️According to the methodology, this user base includes Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers. For many of these subscribers, cloud gaming is not the main feature. So, in reality, the numbers are lower.
GlobalData forecasts that by 2030, the cloud gaming market will grow to $22 billion. There will be 687 million users worldwide.
GlobalData analysts are confident that cloud gaming is set for explosive growth and compare it to music and video streaming.
❗️I, however, think that comparing the consumption formats of movies and music with games is incorrect. Therefore, direct parallels should not be drawn.
In 2022, GlobalData forecasted that the cloud gaming market would grow to $30 billion by 2030. In 2021, the market size was estimated by the company to be $2 billion.
It’s 35,11% CAGR that was expected in 2022; and 38,95% CAGR that GlobalData forecasts now. In reality, cloud gaming has shown a 22,47% CAGR between 2021 and 2023. Still impressive, but growth from the low numbers is always easier.
There have already been more layoffs in 2024 than in 2023
10,800 professionals have lost their jobs in the first half of 2024, according to data from Game Industry Layoffs.
Throughout the entire year of 2023, 10,500 people lost their jobs.
The company with the most layoffs this year is Microsoft, with 2,150 people (from Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, etc.); followed by Unity with 1,800 people, and PlayStation with 900 people.
GSD & GfK: V Rising Leads the UK Market in May 2024
Game Sales
A total of 1.85 million copies of games for PC and consoles were sold in the UK. This is 21% less than the previous year.
V Rising topped the chart after exiting Early Access. The game was released on PlayStation 5 on June 11.
Fallout 4, which was in first place last month, dropped to 4th place.
Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut soared to 6th place due to its release on PC. This is the second-largest PC launch for Sony after the release of Helldivers II, and the largest from a first-party studio. After the first two weeks of sales, the game is outperforming Spider-Man: Remastered in terms of sales dynamics.
Hardware Sales
Less than 65,000 consoles were sold in the UK in May. This is a decrease of 10% from the previous month and 33% from the previous year.
PlayStation 5 leads the chart, but its sales have also declined. Year-over-year (YoY), sales are down 13%.
The biggest impact on the statistics was due to the decline in sales of the Nintendo Switch. In May last year, the console sold well thanks to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Xbox Series S|X was the third best-selling console in May. Sales fell by 9%.
Over 475,000 accessories were sold in the UK in May. This is 12.6% less than in April but 5% higher than in May of the previous year. The top-selling accessory was the DualSense controller.