Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: June 24 - June 28 (2024)

PC/Console AAA games are performing badly on mobile; European game sales dropped by 17%; 15% of Steam users are using the gamepad.

Reports of the week:

1. Sensor Tower: Hybrid-Casual Market in 2023

2. Games & Numbers (12.06.24 - 25.06.24)

3. GSD & GfK: Game sales in Europe in May 2024 fell by 17%

4. StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: The Streaming Market in May 2024

5. Steam in 2024

6. Appfigures & AppMagic: iOS Ports of Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, and Death Stranding are far from success

7. Steam users spent $19B on games they never launched

8. StreamHatchet: The Release of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree significantly increased Elden Ring’s popularity on Streaming Platforms

9. What's the gamepads usage in Steam

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Sensor Tower: Hybrid-Casual Market in 2023

• In 2023, there were 136 new hybrid-casual (according to Sensor Tower taxonomy) projects released. This is 40% more than the previous year.

• The segment's revenue reached $1.5 billion, which is approximately 36% more than the previous year.

• Downloads of hybrid-casual games in 2023 did not grow and remained at the level of 5.9 billion.

Top Hits

• Race Master 3D - Car Racing by SayGames became the most downloaded hybrid-casual game of 2023 with 112.3 million downloads.

• In second place by downloads is Stumble Guys (100.4 million downloads); in third place is Magic Tiles 3: Piano Game (94.4 million).

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• The leaders in revenue for 2023 are Survivor.io ($182.3 million); Triple Match 3D ($138.8 million) and Rush Royale ($70.8 million).

❗️ I do have questions about the Sensor Tower taxonomy. I wouldn’t say that Rush Royale is a hybrid-casual project. However, the question of genre classification is debatable.

New Games in the Top 10

• There are 5 new entries in the top 10. The most notable are My Perfect Hotel (86.9 million downloads) and Car Race 3D: Car Racing (81.4 million downloads).

❗️ Somehow, "Temple Run 2", which was released in 2013, ended up on the list. In the top revenue, we have Legend of Slime (released in July 2022) and Idle Lumber Empire (released in 2021). Overall, sometimes it requires information to be double-checked to avoid misleading.

Most Successful Events

• Celebrating the Lunar New Year boosted the revenue in "Hunt Royale" by over 1000%, and downloads increased by 60%.

• Celebrating Vietnam's national day allowed 1945 - Airplane Shooting Game to increase revenue by 540%; downloads grew by 40%. Overall, there are three shoot'em'up projects from 1SOFT, which specializes in this genre, in the ranking.

• Out of 10 events, only one project has an IP collaboration - Stumble Guys. The event with the Smurfs increased revenue by 270%, and downloads by 160%.

Source

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Games & Numbers (12.06.24 - 25.06.24)

PC/Console Games

• From Software announced just days before the release of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC that Elden Ring has surpassed 25 million copies sold. In February of this year, the company reported 23 million sales.

• Activision Blizzard boasted that their Crash N. Sane Trilogy has been purchased over 20 million times.

• Sales of Resident Evil Village have exceeded 10 million copies, taking 3 years to achieve this milestone. Total sales of the series have surpassed 157 million copies, with the best-selling game being the Resident Evil 2 remake, which sold 13.9 million copies.

• The VR game Gorilla Tag has earned over $100 million since 2021. The game has been bought more than 10 million times, with an average session time of 60 minutes.

• Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin has sold over 2 million copies in 3 years. The game achieved its first million sales within the first 11 days.

• Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance has sold over 500,000 copies in the first 3 days. Combined with the original game, total sales have reached 1.6 million copies.

• Todd Howard announced that Starfield has an audience exceeding 14 million players, with an average gameplay duration of around 40 hours. The milestone of 13 million players was reported in December 2023.

• Over 15 million users have played Microsoft Flight Simulator, a number that includes Game Pass subscribers.

• According to GameDiscoverCo, Black Myth: Wukong has over 4 million wishlists on Steam, with 60-70% of them coming from China. During the 2024 Summer Game Fest, the game has been added to wishlists 854,000 times.

• The meditative building simulator Tiny Glade has garnered over a million wishlists. The developers shared their joy on social media.

Mobile Games

• Sensor Tower reports that Chinese users spent a staggering $270 million on Dungeon & Fighter Mobile in a month, excluding Android stores. Niko Partners revised their forecast for the project, increasing it from $1 billion to nearly $2.5 billion annually. In its first month in China, the game earned more than it did in over two years in Korea ($180 million). The game’s launch was even better than Monopoly GO!, and it’s only available in two markets.

• Summoners War: Sky Arena has earned over $3 billion in ten years. The game reached its first billion in August 2017, the second in August 2020, and the third in June 2024. Over 90% of its revenue has come from outside South Korea.

• Sensor Tower reports that Squad Busters has surpassed 44.3 million downloads and $28 million in revenue, though actual figures are likely higher.

• Wuthering Waves has been downloaded more than 30 million times, according to its developer, Kuro Games. AppMagic reports a figure three times lower but doesn’t account for alternative platforms. The Chinese portal GameLook estimated that the game earned $137.8 million in its first month.

• Zenless Zone Zero has broken the record for pre-registrations held by Squad Busters. In a month and a half, the project has attracted over 41.5 million users. At launch, Honkai: Star Rail had 31 million users and Genshin Impact had 21 million.

• According to Sensor Tower, Solo Leveling: Arise has earned over $70 million in its first month. Of this revenue, 39.4% came from South Korea, 16.9% from the USA, and 15.6% from Japan.

• Cygames announced that their game Uma Musume: Pretty Derby has been downloaded more than 21 million times in 3 years. In Japan alone, the game has earned over $2 billion.

• Million Lords has been downloaded more than 3 million times, according to the developers.

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GSD & GfK: Game sales in Europe in May 2024 fell by 17%

Analytical platforms report only the actual sales figures obtained directly from partners. The mobile segment is not included.

Game Sales

• 11.6 million games for PC and consoles were sold in Europe in May of this year. This is 17% less than the previous year.

❗️ In May 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom alone sold more copies than all the games in the top 10 in May 2024 combined.

• EA Sports FC 24 topped the May chart, followed by GTA V.

• F1 2024 started in the 3rd position, but its initial sales were 35% worse than its predecessor. The release of Ghost of Tsushima on PC allowed the game to climb to the 4th position.

• The only new game in the top 100 in May is Homeworld 3 (ranked 76th).

Hardware Sales

Console sales do not include the markets of Germany and the United Kingdom.

• 311,000 consoles were sold in May 2024, which is 40% less than the previous year.

• The biggest sales drop was seen in the Nintendo Switch sales. Last year, the console was actively purchased due to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

• Accessory sales fell by 25%, with DualSense remaining the leader.

Source - GamesIndustry.biz

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StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: The Streaming Market in May 2024

• In May 2024, Twitch accumulated 1.679 billion hours of watch time. Analysts from StreamElements and Rainmaker.gg compare this to May 2019, when Twitch had 940 million hours. A significant increase.

• However, in May 2024, the number of hours watched per day dropped to 54 million. This is 1% less than the previous month, and overall, the trend of decline has been observed since the beginning of the year.

• Streamer Kai Cenat decided to conduct a marathon on Elden Ring, which resulted in the game entering the top 10 in terms of hours watched (27 million). He played the game for 116 hours, with an average of 105,000 viewers watching his progress.

• By the end of the month, KaiCenat became the most-watched gaming streamer, with over 20 million hours of watch time.

Source

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Steam in 2024

Cassidy Gerber, a member of Steam's business team, shared the platform updates at Nordic’24.

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• Steam is growing in revenue. Over the past 5 years, the platform's revenue has more than doubled, increasing by over 2.5 times.

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❗️Simon Carless in his newsletter GameDiscoverCo estimated that Steam earned $1.075 billion in May 2024, which is 14% more than in May 2023.

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• Daily revenue from seasonal sales on Steam is growing. The Spring Sale in 2023 increased by 22% year-over-year (YoY); the Summer Sale by 23%; the Autumn Sale by 17%; and the Winter Sale by 13%. All sales, except for the Spring Sale, set absolute revenue records in 2023.

• The peak number of concurrent users on Steam reached 36.3 million.

• The peak number of concurrent players exceeded 10 million.

• The user base of Steam has grown the most (by more than 150%) in the last 5 years in Japan, India, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Israel, and Pakistan.

• Significant growth (over 100%) in the last 5 years was seen in China, Serbia, Spain, the Philippines, Vietnam, Peru, and the USA.

❗️ The USA is marked with an asterisk, and Cassidy did not explain why during the lecture.

• Key growing regions are Asia (including Southeast Asia), Central, and South America.

• Steam shared the distribution of languages on the platform. The most popular language is English (35.08%); the second is Chinese (28.08%); and the third is Russian (7.91%). The platform currently supports 29 languages.

• 65% of Steam's audience indicated a primary language other than English. This underscores the importance of localization.

Source

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Appfigures & AppMagic: iOS Ports of Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, and Death Stranding are far from success

Premium games on iOS are available for free for a limited time, and they need to be purchased to continue.

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Resident Evil

• Resident Evil 4, according to Appfigures, has been downloaded 357 thousand times, with the project's revenue amounting to $208 thousand. This means that at $29.99, the game was purchased 7 thousand times.

• Resident Evil Village has 370 thousand downloads and $92 thousand in revenue. For $15.99, the game was purchased by 5750 people.

• AppMagic's estimates are higher - the service's analysts suggest that Resident Evil 4 was purchased 15 thousand times, and Resident Evil Village was purchased 34 thousand times.

Assassin’s Creed Mirage

• Since its release on June 6, the game has been purchased 3 thousand times at $49.99. The project was downloaded 123 thousand times and earned $138 thousand. The game is only available on iPhone 15 Pro and the latest iPads.

• AppMagic's estimate is higher - almost 6 thousand buyers and 279 thousand downloads.

Death Stranding

• Since January 2024, the game has been purchased 10.6 thousand times at $19.99, according to AppFigures. This is about $212 thousand in gross revenue.

• AppMagic gives an estimate of 23 thousand buyers.

General Conclusions

• So far, AAA games on iOS are performing poorly. Considering the need for porting and optimization, the economic benefits of such an enterprise appear dubious.

• AppMagic analyst Andrey Zubov reasonably notes that people who have bought an iPhone 15 Pro and are ready to pay $50 for a AAA game likely also have the means to purchase a console.

Source

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Steam users spent $19B on games they never launched

The study was conducted by the PCGamesN portal using the Steamidfinder service.

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• Only 10% of Steam accounts are accessible for analysis. The study was based on these accounts. The owners of these accounts spent $1.9 billion on games they never launched. The journalists from the portal simply multiplied this figure by 10.

❗️The service does not consider whether a game was purchased on sale. Therefore, the actual figure could be half as much.

Source

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StreamHatchet: The Release of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree significantly increased Elden Ring’s popularity on Streaming Platforms

• The number of views started to increase on May 25, a month before the DLC release. The number of daily viewing hours grew from 736,000 on May 25 to 5.8 million hours the day before the DLC release.

• On release day, the game received 15.2 million viewed hours.

• Over the three days from June 21 to June 24, the game accumulated 46.2 million viewing hours. The peak number of viewers was 835,000; the average number of viewers was 494,000.

• This is an impressive metric for any game, but considering it's for a DLC, it’s a crazy success.

• KaiCenat’s streams of the Elden Ring DLC garnered 5.1 million viewer hours. This is 11% of the total viewing volume for the game after the DLC release.

Source

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What's the gamepads usage in Steam

Yeah, there was such a thing.

The data was shared by the platform itself.

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• Since 2018, the number of sessions with gamepads has tripled – from 5% to 15%.

• 42% of all gamepad sessions use Steam Input (which includes support for more than 300 controllers).

• 59% of all gaming sessions use an Xbox gamepad; 26% use PlayStation gamepads; 10% use Steam Deck.

Source