Newzoo & Pangle: Puzzle Games Report
The unique genre, where Western developers outperform Eastern.
In 2020 Puzzle Genre earned $6.9B in revenue. It’s 8% of the overall income of the mobile gaming market.
The majority of money ($2B) came from the US. Japan is second with $1.2B and China is third with $0.9B. Cumulatively, those 3 countries are responsible for more than 50% of genre revenue.
Puzzle Games were one of the first to try hybrid monetization with in-apps, ads, and subscriptions mix.
Puzzle Games is the first genre by the popularity in the US, Great Britain, Japan, and South Korea.
In the US the Puzzle genre has the same amount of Top Grossing games (10) as the Strategy genre.
Women are playing Puzzle games more often. The closest to equality situation is in South Korea, where 48% of the Puzzle audience are male.
It’s one of the few titles, where Western developers are performing much better than Eastern. Even in the Asian markets.