Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: January 29 - February 2 (2024)
Genshin Impact set a new mobile record; Epic Games was the console MAU leader in December 2023; the UK gaming industry is quite positive about the future.
Reports of this week:
Ampere Analysis: Epic Games became the leader in MAU on consoles in December
PlayStation sales in Japan in 2023 are the best in 14 years
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince became the leader of Japanese charts in December 2023
Sensor Tower: State of the South Korean Mobile Gaming Market in the H2 2023
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg - State of the Game Streaming Market in December 2023
data.ai: Genshin Impact became the fastest game in history to earn $5B on mobile devices
TIGA: British game studios express cautious optimism about the 2024
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue & Downloads in January 2024
AppsFlyer: Benchmark on Game uninstalls on Android in October-November 2023
Ampere Analysis: Epic Games became the leader in MAU on consoles in December
13.9% of the entire monthly audience of PlayStation and Xbox played Fortnite in December. This is more than all EA games (13.6% of the audience), Take-Two (8.9%), or Activision Blizzard (8.2%).
In November 2023, the total number of hours spent by players in Fortnite increased by 146%. And in December, the figure rose by an additional 9% - to more than 1.6 billion hours.
Judging by MAU, Microsoft with Activision Blizzard is the largest publisher on consoles in the world. In December, 14.4% of console players played their games.
PlayStation sales in Japan in 2023 are the best in 14 years
In 2023, 2.58 million PlayStation 5 units were sold. The last time there were more sales was in 2010 when the PlayStation Portable sold 2.88 million copies.
2023 ranks as the 12th most successful year for PlayStation systems (out of 25). Sony's major success occurred in 1997 when the first PlayStation was sold 4.45 million times.
In its fourth year on the market, PS5 managed to surpass PlayStation 4 in Japan in annual sales. However, the cumulative sales of PS4 are still higher (5.8 M over 4 years compared to 4.95M for PS5).
On the other hand, all these achievements pale in comparison to Nintendo. In 2023, Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console in Japan, and all of the top 10 best-selling games in the country were for this console. In the last 19 years, only once has a Nintendo console not been at the top of the chart (precisely in 2010).
Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince became the leader of Japanese charts in December 2023
Famitsu only takes into account the sales of physical copies of games.
Game Sales
In the first month after its launch, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince sold 510.5 thousand copies in Japan.
In second place is Super Mario Bros. Wonder (460.7 thousand copies); in third place is Momotaro Dentetsu World (382.7 thousand copies).
Baldur’s Gate III entered the sales charts in Japan for the first time in December. The game secured the 24th position with 25.9 thousand copies sold.
Nintendo holds 39.9% of all physical game sales in the country. Following are Square Enix (16.1%) and Konami (12%).
Hardware Sales
Nintendo Switch is the best-selling console of the month (435 thousand systems).
PlayStation 5 sold 177.7 thousand consoles; Xbox Series S|X sold 7.3 thousand units.
Sensor Tower: State of the South Korean Mobile Gaming Market in the H2 2023
Overall numbers
According to Sensor Tower, mobile revenue in South Korea in the second half of 2023 amounted to $2.66 billion - 3% less than the same period the previous year ($2.75 billion).
However, the trend is positive. The difference between the first halves of 2022 and 2023 is 16% (the market was higher in 2022).
In the second half of 2023, revenue from mobile games on the App Store grew by 4%. The decline is attributed to a 5% decrease on Google Play.
The number of downloads in the second half of 2023 dropped by 15% compared to 2022 - from 235 million to 200 million.
Once again, the App Store showed a growth of 6%; Google Play plummeted by 21%.
Top Games by Revenue and Downloads
Three games from the Lineage series are at the top by revenue. Lineage M is in the first position; Lineage W is in the fourth position; Lineage 2M is in the fifth position.
Night Crows, released in April 2023, took the second position by revenue.
MMORPGs continue to dominate the Korean charts, but Raising Seven Knights; Whiteout Survival, and EA Sports FC Mobile add diversity.
Top Mobile Games by Growth Dynamics
Raising Seven Knights - Netmarble's Idle RPG - leads in South Korea in terms of revenue and download growth dynamics.
Idle RPGs are getting hot not only in South Korea. Amount of new titles in this genre is big, and many of them are getting to the top.
Tower of God: A New World, also a game from Netmarble, performs well. The project is in the fifth position in terms of sales growth dynamics.
Royal Match - in the 7th position in South Korea. The game earned $36 million in the country in the second half of 2023.
Publisher Rankings
NCSoft - the highest-earning publisher in South Korea, thanks to the Lineage series.
WEMADE jumped from the 15th position to the 5th position, thanks to the success of Night Crows.
In the top 10 in South Korea, there are a total of 4 foreign publishers. These are miHoYo, Century Games (a newcomer), Tencent, and 37GAMES.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg - State of the Game Streaming Market in December 2023
Twitch had a mostly stable year in 2023, with a 3% increase in the number of hours watched in Q4.
The average daily hours on Twitch in December reached 57.7 million hours, marking the highest figure since April 2023.
💬 Co-founder of StreamElements, Or Perry, notes: "One notable takeaway is that streaming cutbacks from top talent who now share time on other platforms did not significantly impact viewership. This has also opened the door for other stars to take the throne, such as Japan’s fps_shaka landing top streamer for the first time. One avenue for Twitch to accelerate its growth is to encourage its creators to multi-stream, given the existing broader gaming audience".
Grand Theft Auto V (162 million hours - +59% MoM), Fortnite (101 million hours - -9% MoM), and League of Legends (94 million hours - -22% MoM) were the leaders on Twitch in December 2023.
Call of Duty: Warzone experienced significant growth - a 349% increase, thanks to the release of Season 1. The game garnered 38 million hours of views in December.
fps_shaka - the top streamer in December on Twitch. The Japanese-speaking streamer has never claimed the top spot before. He streamed Grand Theft Auto V the most, totaling 239 hours.
data.ai: Genshin Impact became the fastest game in history to earn $5B on mobile devices
It took the game 40 months to achieve this milestone since its release in September 2020. The previous record was held by Clash of Clans (51 months).
It's important to note that the calculation does not include Chinese Android stores, so the actual figure is even higher. Genshin Impact earned nearly $1.5 billion on iOS alone in China, accounting for 30% of its revenue.
In Japan, Genshin Impact earned $1.06 billion (21% of total revenue); in the United States, it earned $903 million (18%).
Currently, there are only 13 games worldwide that have crossed the $5 billion revenue mark. Before Genshin Impact, Gardenscapes achieved this milestone, taking the game 91 months.
TIGA: British game studios express cautious optimism about the 2024
Hiring situation
73% of surveyed businesses plan to increase their workforce in 2024 (compared to 75% in 2023).
21% plan to maintain the same staffing levels.
6% of respondents plan layoffs.
33% of surveyed businesses state that a shortage of qualified employees is the main hindrance to company growth in 2024.
Business Investments
These are investments related to R&D, employee training, and the development of new projects.
44% of businesses are more optimistic about these costs than in 2023.
36% do not anticipate significant changes by 2023.
19% of respondents believe that the situation with internal investments will worsen.
Results
70% responded that their companies feel "good" or "very good," compared to 75% the previous year.
27% of businesses feel the same as the previous year.
3% reported that the situation is either bad or very bad.
Expectations
However, 46% of respondents note that they are optimistic about the coming year (compared to 40% the previous year).
54% expect an increase in net profit in the next 12 months.
But optimism about market conditions has fallen from 66% in 2023 to 46%.
Costs and Prices
77% of businesses expect an increase in spending on personnel and equipment this year, compared to 86% in the previous year.
35% of businesses plan to shift some of these expenses to customers; 56% do not plan to change pricing policies.
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue & Downloads in January 2024
AppMagic provides data on revenue net of store fees and taxes.
Revenue
Honor of Kings returned to the top of the chart and earned $120.2 million. MONOPOLY GO! took the second spot with $113.8 million. The game experienced a slight decline after reaching peak values in January.
Teamfight Tactics (specifically the Chinese version - Battle of the Golden Spatula) showed explosive growth in January. The project earned $55 million in China on iOS alone, up from $17.9 million in December 2023.
CrossFire: Legends claimed the 11th spot on the charts with $46.8M in revenue, 98% of which came from Chinese iOS. The dynamics are interesting - the game had $5.5 million in revenue in December 2023, marking an 8.5-fold increase.
Downloads
Royal Match became the most downloaded game of the month with 21.6 million installations. The game jumped nine positions in January.
Roblox (20.6 million), Block Blast! (19.5 million), Subway Surfers (18.9 million) secured the second to fourth positions.
Help Me: Tricky Story - a new game in the charts with 17.1 million downloads (5th place). This is a Brain puzzle from the Vietnamese studio ABI Game Studio. The company's previous hits include an app with prank sounds (farting, haircut machine, etc.), a weapon sound simulator, and a social title based on the Squid Games.
AppsFlyer: Benchmark on Game uninstalls on Android in October-November 2023
The figures are presented only for Android, as with the release of iOS 15, accurately tracking changes on iOS has become impossible.
According to AppsFlyer, every second app is uninstalled from mobile devices within 30 days of installation.
The situation is the worst for dating apps (64.6% of users uninstall them within 30 days) and games (52% of users uninstall the game within 30 days).
Paying users uninstall games more frequently (56.96% within the first month); organic users uninstall less often (50.06% within the first month).
In developing countries, the number of apps uninstalls is on average 20% higher than in developed countries.
AppsFlyer studied data from October 2023 on uninstallations of gaming apps. 43.54% of uninstalls occur on the first day of installing the game. Most likely, user expectations did not align with reality. 90.9% of uninstalls occur within the first 11 days. Afterward, uninstalls accumulate steadily.
Benchmark for the USA
Considering paid traffic, casual games in the USA, on average, have 47.55% of users uninstalling within the first 30 days. However, for the top 10% of projects in this regard, uninstalls are dramatically lower - only 1.11%.
The figure looks suspiciously low. Without additional information, I would approach it skeptically.
With mid-core projects, it's a bit more challenging. Looking at organic users, 51.69% uninstall the game within the first 30 days. However, for the top 10% of projects, this figure is three times lower - 16.67%.
Here, the figure seems more plausible.