data.ai & Deconstructor of Fun: Mobile Gaming market in 2022 and beyond
The market is declining but panic aside.
Games still account for 61% of all users’ spending on apps.
In Q3 2022 users spent weekly $1.5B on mobile games and downloaded more than 1.1B games. It’s 25% more than in pre-pandemic Q3 2019.
In H1 2022 mobile games in App Store & Google Play earned $41.2B. It’s 7.5% lower than in H1 2021, but 14% more than in H1 2020.
Downloads continue to grow. In H1 2022 mobile games were downloaded 30B times. It’s 11.5% more than in H1 2021.
The number of games in the App Store has been declining since 2016. The number of new releases is constantly small since 2018.
The number of games earning $10M+ per year is growing. In 2021 this amount reached 925 games.
63% of all mobile gaming revenue in the US in H1 2022 was generated by games from top-100. In 2020 this percentage was 62%.
25 games released in 2021 reached top-100 by revenue (against 19 in 2020). On average it took them 4 months (against 7 in the H1 2020).
The most successful genres of H1 2022 (without Ad Monetization).
RPG - $12.8B (31% of all IAP volume). 2% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue - 9.4%. YoY decline by downloads - 3.5%.
Strategy - $6.4B (15% of all IAP volume). 2% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue - 3.2%. YoY growth by downloads - 16.5%.
Match - $4.4B (11% of all IAP volume). 5% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue - 6.8%. YoY growth by downloads - 15%.
Casino - $4.2B (10% of all IAP volume). 2% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue - 1.9%. YoY growth by downloads - 35.2%.
Simulation - $4.2B (10% of all IAP volume). 17% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue - 13.7%. YoY growth by downloads - 25%.
Shooters - $2.5B (6% of all IAP volume). 4% of all downloads. YoY decline by revenue - 7.2%. YoY growth by downloads - 10.8%.
Trends
The number of hypercasual games at the top is decreasing. Developers do experiments with hybrid monetization.
Casual games managed to reach the growing downloads. However, the revenue is still behind the trail and beyond 2020 and 2021 results.
3 advice from data.ai & Deconstructor of Fun on how to work on the crisis market:
Be creative. Test your marketing. Diversify channels.
Use IPs.
Look outside of iOS and the US. Use different monetization formats.