Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: February 12 - February 18 (2024)
IP in games report from Sensor Tower; European game sales dropped by 7% in January; Helldivers 2 is the best game by CCU from PlayStation Studios on PC.
Reports of this week:
GameDiscoverCo: Where Steam and PlayStation audiences are in 2024
Sensor Tower: IP in Games Landscape Report
GSD & GfK: PC/console game sales in Europe in January 2024 decreased by 7%
Famitsu: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth became the best-selling game of the month in Japan in January
Helldivers 2 is the most successful release of PlayStation Studios on PC in terms of CCU, but Destiny 2 numbers are still higher
GameDiscoverCo: Where Steam and PlayStation audiences are in 2024
Simon Carless from GameDiscoverCo decided to track from which countries people played on Steam and PlayStation over the last 2 weeks (from January 16, 2024, to January 30, 2024).
There is a hypothesis that this figure more realistically reflects the distribution of the active audience by country and excludes those who play occasionally.
Steam Statistics
21% of the audience on Steam is from China. This is 71% more than in the study that examined all players on the platform.
These figures could have been influenced by the release of Palworld, 36.4% of which audience is from China.
The second largest audience is from the USA (13.6%); in third place is Russia (8.7%).
PlayStation Statistics
31.7% of the audience on PlayStation over the past two weeks is from the USA.
Following are France (5.5%), the United Kingdom (5.3%), and surprisingly, Brazil (5.3%).
There is also a large audience in Hong Kong (3.6% of the total - possibly due to "gray" shipments of consoles to China) and Turkey (2.52% of the total audience - most likely due to the overflow of the audience from Russia).
It is also interesting that Arab countries account for 5.4% of the entire PlayStation audience. The value of the region for Sony is increasing.
Sensor Tower: IP in Games Landscape Report
Overview
Mobile games based on IP earned $16 billion in 2023 from in-game purchases.
$5 billion of this amount came from gaming IPs (Pokemon GO; Call of Duty); $2 billion from anime and manga (Uma Musume Pretty Derby); $1.1 billion from sports franchises (EA Sports FC Mobile); $1 billion from board games (Monopoly); $400 million from comics (Marvel or DC); $320 million from television IPs (Star Trek).
In geolocation-based projects, the share of IP games is 95%. In sports projects - 37%; in RPGs - 30%; in action games - 29%; in arcades - 26%. IAP revenue for 2023 was considered. Less saturation in board games (17%); racing (16%); strategies (15%); shooters (14%).
All major launches on PC and consoles in 2023 in the USA were either series continuations or IP games.
Successes of 2023
MONOPOLY GO! - the highest-earning mobile game in the world based on IP.
Hasbro - the highest-earning IP holder in the mobile market. According to Sensor Tower, Monopoly GO! earned $896 million net. Following were NCSoft (Lineage - $719 million); Nintendo (Pokemon - $628 million and other IPs); Hiotsubashi Group (One Piece - $273 million; Naruto - $218 million; Yu-Gi-Oh - $89 million); Disney (Marvel - $350 million; Disney animated films - $244 million; Star Wars - $96 million).
Thanks to the success of MONOPOLY GO!, Scopely became the largest revenue publisher of IP games. In 2020-2021, BANDAI NAMCO led due to Dragon Ball Z; in 2022, NCSoft took first place (Lineage).
IP Revenue by Genre and Country
RPGs account for 36% of all revenue from licensed IPs.
IP projects are most popular in Asia. This region accounts for 70% of all game downloads for licensed IPs.
In European countries, gaming IPs dominate revenue. Only France stands out - 31% of revenue from licensed games in this region comes from anime projects.
RPGs are the most popular (and profitable) genre for gaming or anime licensed projects.
The USA and Asia are the main regions for sports IP projects. Surprisingly, 37% of the audience for EA Sports FC is from South Korea; 20% from China; 10% from the USA. Germany and the UK, with their football culture, make up only 3%.
Hogwarts Legacy Case
Hogwarts Legacy surpassed its closest competitor (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) by 5 times in terms of advertising coverage in the first 2 weeks after launch in the USA.
YouTube is a priority channel for PC/console games, which Hogwarts Legacy actively utilized.
Despite being available on PC and Xbox Series S|X, all advertising was exclusively branded for PlayStation.
The advertising campaign for Hogwarts Legacy was entirely focused on the first month after release. There was then a small activation upon the game's release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
49% of the project's advertising budget was spent on 30-second videos.
IP Collaborations in Games
In August-September 2023, for example, Roblox held four events in a month. With Cirque du Soleil, K-Pop group BLACKPINK; Japanese show Takeshi’s Castle, and Paris Hilton. These events did not have a significant impact on revenue.
Another example is the collaboration Goddess of Victory: Nikke with NieR: Automata. Distributed over two stages, the event increased the project's daily revenue almost 10 times.
GSD & GfK: PC/console game sales in Europe in January 2024 decreased by 7%
Analytical platforms report only actual sales figures obtained directly from partners. Nintendo, for example, does not share information on digital copy sales. The mobile segment is also not taken into account.
Game Sales
12.14 million copies of games were sold in Europe in January 2024. This is 7.3% less than the previous year.
EA Sports FC 24 was the best-selling game of the month in the region. Sales were almost equivalent to FIFA 23 results in January 2023.
The Last of Us: Part II Remastered became the best-selling new release of the month (second place). Sales for the first 2 weeks were 2.5 times higher than The Last of Us: Part I. However, this does not mean that Sony earned more - upgrading from the PS4 version was possible for €10.
Tekken 8 debuted at 7th place on the chart. The game sells 80% better than Street Fighter 6.
Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice suddenly entered the chart at 8th place. The game received a significant discount on Steam.
Palworld is not on the list because developers do not share data with GSD.
Hardware Sales
475 thousand consoles were sold in Europe in January 2024. This is 1.4% less than the previous year. And the figures, as before, do not include Germany and the United Kingdom.
PlayStation 5 is the top-selling system in the region. Unlike in the UK, sales did not decline in Europe.
However, Nintendo Switch experienced a significant decline in sales. The console is approaching its 7th birthday, and it is expected that a new console will be released later this year.
Sales of Xbox Series S|X slightly declined compared to the previous year.
European players bought 1.8 million accessories in January. This is 1.4% less than in January 2023.
Famitsu: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth became the best-selling game of the month in Japan in January
Famitsu only takes into account physical sales.
Game Sales
Physical sales of Momotaro Dentetsu World: The Earth Spins with Hope amounted to just over 153 thousand copies, formally placing the game at the top of the physical charts.
However, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, released on January 26, sold 103 thousand physical copies on PS5 and 77.1 thousand on PS4. If it weren't for Famitsu's chart peculiarities, the game would have topped the sales chart.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder, in second place, sold 151.5 thousand physical copies.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is also performing well with 98.1 thousand copies sold.
In January, Nintendo held 34.1% of the physical gaming market; SEGA - 12.3%; Konami - 10.2%.
Hardware Sales
Nintendo Switch remains the clear leader in sales. 241.2 thousand systems were sold in January, with the majority of sales attributed to the OLED version.
PlayStation 5 comes in second in sales with 185.4 thousand systems sold.
Xbox Series S|X sold 7.6 thousand consoles in January.
Helldivers 2 is the most successful release of PlayStation Studios on PC in terms of CCU, but Destiny 2 numbers are still higher
Currently, the peak CCU for Helldivers 2 stands at 203.6 thousand users.
The previous record for PlayStation Studios belonged to God of War, which had over 73 thousand users playing simultaneously.
Of course, it's worth considering the genre specificity here. All previous Sony releases on the platform are geared towards single-player gameplay.
Meanwhile, the peak CCU for Destiny 2 on Steam, which is now also in Sony's portfolio, is 316.7 thousand. This was set in March 2023.
The peak CCU for the first Helldivers was 6.7 thousand people. In terms of this metric, the sequel's results are more than 30 times higher.