Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: December 23 - December 27 (2024)
Steam users spend most of their time on old titles; The Game Awards had more viewers than the Super Bowl; DFC Intelligence doesn't believe there will be 3 consoles in the next generation.
Reports of the week:
Newzoo: Top 20 PC/console games of November 2024 by Revenue and MAU
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: Twitch in 2024
Games & Numbers (December 11 - December 24; 2024)
GSD & GfK: Game sales in the UK in November 2024 fell by 33%
SuperJoost: 154 million people watched The Game Awards 2024
DFC Intelligence: There won’t be room for three consoles in the gaming industry
IGEA: Australian Gaming Industry in FY 2024
Steam users spent only 15% of their time on games released in 2024
Newzoo: Top 20 PC/console games of November 2024 by Revenue and MAU
Newzoo takes into account the markets of the USA, UK, Spain, Germany, Italy, and France.
Revenue - all platforms
The November ranking by total revenue includes 5 new releases - Dragon Age: The Veilguard (5th place); Farming Simulator 25 (6th place), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (7th position), Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (11th place) and Mario & Luigi: Brothership (13th place).
Revenue - individual platforms
On PC, Planet Coaster 2 (14th place) and Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (15th place) also made it into the ranking. Sony’s strategy is showing good results once again - their former exclusives are selling well on PC.
On PlayStation, only Farming Simulator 25 (8th place) made it to the top.
Among the new releases on Xbox - Death Stranding (15th place). The game was released on Xbox 5 years after its original release.
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On Nintendo Switch, a couple of new projects are in the chart - Mario & Luigi: Brothership (2nd place) and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (9th position). Also, Kirby and the Forgotten Land (18th place) jumped up 233 positions.
MAU - all platforms
In the MAU rankings (in the top ten), there are almost no changes. Fortnite, Call of Duty, Minecraft, ROBLOX, GTA V are still in the top positions.
There are updates in the Steam charts - Dragon Age: The Veilguard (17th place), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (19th place) and Farming Simulator 25 (20th place).
On Xbox, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl made it to the 9th place by MAU.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: Twitch in 2024
During the first 11 months of 2024, users spent 18.5 billion hours watching content on Twitch. Last year, for the same period, it was 18.9 billion hours. The lack of growth is explained by competition from other platforms.
The average daily number of viewing hours was record-breaking in Q1’24 (January- February was the best month for this indicator); then, it decreased.
The top 10 most-viewed categories on Twitch have remained unchanged for 5 years. 9 games have been in this list since 2020. And the most popular category is Just Chatting.
Grand Theft Auto V is the leader in the number of viewing hours for the first 11 months of 2024.
KaiCenat is the most popular streamer of 2024. From January to November, he was watched for 184 million hours. The closest follower, ibai, has 90 million hours.
Games & Numbers (December 11 - December 24; 2024)
PC/Console Games
The creation and subsequent operation of Second Life cost more than $1.3 billion (the game was released in 2003). The game’s annual revenue is around $650 million. Second Life became profitable two years after its release. In 2024, the project creators will pay $1.1 billion to content creators. The company retains only 10% of sales, and the chances of earning $10,000 are 100 times higher than in Roblox. The project is expected to be released on mobile devices soon.
Despite Balatro winning Game of the Year, Buckshot Roulette was bought more times - 4 million. Developers shared this with the Steam Community.
Balatro sales have surpassed 3.5 million copies. The game recently launched successfully on mobile devices.
Sales of Tales of Berseria across all platforms reached 2.5 million copies. The game was released in 2017 on PlayStation and PC. Total sales of the series have exceeded 30 million copies.
Marvel Rivals’ audience has reached 20 million people. It took less than 2 weeks for the game to achieve this.
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Mobile Games
In 4 years since its release, Rush Royale has earned more than $370 million. Overall downloads exceeded 90 million times.
In the first month after release, Royal Kingdom earned $5.49 million after deducting commissions and taxes (according to AppMagic). The game was downloaded 4.12 million times. Back then, Royal Match earned $1.73 million and had 995,900 downloads over the same period.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete (formerly a F2P game that Nintendo decided to rework into a Premium project) earned $3.1 million before taxes and commissions in its debut month. One of the days (December 8 - $505k) turned out to be the best in the project’s history. People were motivated by the ability to save their progress.
Hill Climb Racing series has been downloaded more than 2.5 billion times. 50 million new players come to the game monthly.
Pokemon TCG Pocket has been downloaded more than 60 million times. The release took place on October 30, 2024. The game’s revenue has already exceeded $200 million.
Delta Force is actively gaining an audience in China. Daniel Ahmad from Niko Partners noted that the number of players in the Chinese version of the project has exceeded 40 million people. The “beta” started there on September 26 this year.
Infinity Nikki has been downloaded more than 20 million times. The game was released on December 5 on mobile devices, PC, and PlayStation.
GSD & GfK: Game sales in the UK in November 2024 fell by 33%
Analytical platforms report only actual sales figures obtained directly from partners. The mobile segment is also not taken into account.
Game sales
Over 3 million games were sold in the UK in November this year. This figure is 33% lower than last year’s indicators. This is due to two factors: the release of CoD: Black Ops 6 in October 2024; and the absence of Black Friday (analysts will attribute the sale to December).
❗️Therefore, all November results may not reflect the real YoY picture.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is the sales leader; EA Sports FC 25 is in second place (sales fell by 22% YoY, but remember the factor above. However, the results of the football simulator during sales this year are also 20% worse than in the previous one); Dragon Age: The Veilguard is in third place.
Another new release of the month was Mario & Luigi: Brothership. The game is selling 16% worse in the first 3 weeks compared to Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door and 19% worse than Super Mario RPG.
Hardware sales
About 270 thousand gaming consoles were sold in November 2024. This is 85% more than in October 2024 but 45% less than in November 2023. Again, I remind you about the difference in calculations, so the comparisons are inaccurate.
PS5 Pro accounted for 26% of all PS5 systems sold in November. At the same time, more PS5s were sold this Black Friday than last year.
1.05 million accessories were sold in the UK in November. An increase of 58% compared to last month, but a decrease of 18% compared to last year. DualSense remains the most popular accessory.
SuperJoost: 154 million people watched The Game Awards 2024
The number of views increased by 31% compared to last year.
Joost van Dreunen notes in his blog that this is the largest entertainment event by this metric in 2024. Even the Super Bowl (123.4 million viewers) - the undisputed leader in viewer interest - had fewer viewers.
DFC Intelligence: There won’t be room for three consoles in the gaming industry
The company predicts growth in the gaming industry, but not for everyone. According to DFC Intelligence, one of the three gaming consoles will face significant challenges.
Analysts believe that user spending on PC/console games will increase from $72 billion in 2024 to $83 billion in 2028. Meanwhile, spending on gaming hardware will grow from $82 billion in 2024 to just over $120 billion in 2028. As a result, the total PC and console market will reach $203 billion in 2028.
❗️DFC Intelligence’s estimate of the overall games software market generally correlates with data from Newzoo and Aldora. However, their estimate of gaming hardware sales differs from Aldora’s data by more than double (DFC Intelligence’s figures are higher).
A bright future is predicted for the Nintendo Switch 2, with initial sales expected to surpass its predecessor. However, PlayStation and Xbox will face serious competition for their place in the market.
When considering the structure of payments in PC and console games, DFC Intelligence believes that people will buy more in-game items and subscriptions. Regarding the latter, individual subscriptions (like in WoW) are expected to grow faster than subscription services like Game Pass.
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The number of gamers worldwide will exceed 4 billion by 2027. Most of them will spend little on games. The top 10% of the most valuable players will generate 65% of all revenue.
IGEA: Australian Gaming Industry in FY 2024
Results are reported for the 2024 financial year, not the calendar year. The 2024 financial year in Australia runs from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024. Throughout the text, I’ll name the FY as a “year” for simplicity.
Financial Results
Australian gaming companies earned $339.1 million in 2024. 93% of this amount came from overseas markets. However, this sum is 1.9% less than last year.
Regarding revenue, studios are rather optimistic. 53% believe they can increase their income in 2025; 28% plan to stay at least at the same level.
Australian Gaming Companies
25% of studios in the country are over 10 years old. 19% are between 6 and 9 years old. 56% have been in the market for up to 5 years.
85% of Australian studios work on their own IP.
Only 4% of Australian studios work entirely remotely.
Local companies cite difficulties in attracting publishing deals (both with international and local publishers) as their main challenges. There’s also a problem with attracting investments in the early stages.
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Employment
2,465 people are employed in Australian gaming companies. Despite all the industry problems, this is 0.3% more than last year.
In 2025, 61% of studios plan to grow their staff.
In 2024, the percentage of gender diversity in the Australian gaming industry decreased.
Steam users spent only 15% of their time on games released in 2024
This information comes directly from Valve, comparing user metrics with the platform average as part of Steam Replay 2024 (which showcases the year’s results).
Games released this year accounted for only 15% of total playtime on Steam.
Users spent 47% of their total playtime on games released between 2017 and 2023.
Games released before 2017 occupied 37% of users’ total gaming time.
In 2023, time spent on new games amounted to 9% of the total (so there’s significant progress here, largely thanks to Palworld, Helldivers II, Black Myth: Wukong). In 2022, Steam users played new games 17% of the time.
It’s important to note that 2024 is a record-breaking year for the number of new games on Steam (18,597 projects). This is 29.9% more than last year. All of this indicates that competition on the platform is intensifying.