Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: November 11 - November 15 (2024)

New charts from the UK & Japan; and a great report from Moloco about the mobile gaming market.

Reports of the week:

1. Moloco: Mobile market status and Growth opportunities in 2024

2. Games & Numbers (October 30 - November 12; 2024)

3. GSD & GfK: The UK gaming market grew by 3.2% YoY in October 2024

4. Famitsu: Super Mario Party Jamboree leads Japanese physical sales chart in October 2024

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Moloco: Mobile market status and Growth opportunities in 2024

The company collected data on user acquisition for over 4,000 mobile games in 195 countries from September 2023 to September 2024. The study does not include spending in mainland China.

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• Gaming companies are expected to spend $29 billion on UA in 2025.

• 71% of this volume will be concentrated in 10 countries. 39.8% of all spending will be in the USA.

• Region’s revenue is highly dependent on genre. For example, 65.5% of casino user acquisition is in the USA. However for RPGs, the USA accounts for 25.1%, while South Korea accounts for 24.9%.

• Moloco notes an interesting trend - companies spend more money on local or culturally close markets. For instance, American companies spend most of their budget on Western markets (81.6% of the total volume). Chinese companies spend almost 3 times more on Asian markets than American companies.

• The general trend is that the higher the UA spending in a specific market (e.g., the USA), the higher the IAP revenue. However, this correlation “breaks” in Asian markets like South Korea and Japan. In these countries, IAP revenue is higher than UA spending. Moloco analysts note that this may indicate that many advertisers don’t understand how to work in local markets.

• Moloco also offers an interesting framework for working with markets, highlighting several main blocks. These include English-speaking Tier-1 markets; East Asian countries; Latin American Spanish-speaking countries, and so on.

• The highest D7 ARPPU, on average, is in Hong Kong ($37.5); Qatar ($28) and Iceland ($27.4).

• 70-85% of all IAP revenue is generated by 10% of users. The most valuable 2% of players generate 35% to 45% of all IAP revenue.

• In its methodology, Moloco identifies as promising those markets with a low cost of acquiring a paying user (CPP) but high (relatively) ARPPU.

❗️However, it’s strange that the list of “promising” markets includes those that have long been considered “base” markets - the USA, South Korea, Japan, leading European countries.

Source - interactive tables by country and genre are available by the link.

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Games & Numbers (October 30 - November 12; 2024)

PC/Console Games

• Call of Duty series games have been purchased over 500 million times. Only Mario has more (879.4 million copies).

• Hogwarts Legacy has been bought by more than 30 million players. It took less than two years to achieve this; Warner Bros. reported 22 million copies sold at the beginning of this year.

• Phasmophobia has been purchased more than 20 million times.

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance has been bought more than 8 million times. The game was released in 2018. The sequel is set to release on February 11, 2025.

• Over 19 million people have played Death Stranding. This doesn’t refer to sales, as the game was distributed for free through subscription services.

• Despite mixed player reviews, Dragon Age: The Veilguard showed the best concurrent user count among all EA’s story-driven games - 89,400 people. Only multiplayer games like Apex Legends, Battlefield, EA Sports FC, and The Sims 4 (after transitioning to the F2P model) had higher numbers.

• The Sims 4 has gained over 15 million new players in the last year.

• Mod support in Baldur’s Gate III was warmly received by the audience. Mods have been downloaded more than 50 million times.

• The open beta testing of Monster Hunter Wilds reached 463,000 concurrent users. It took place from November 1 to 4. The game will be released on February 28, 2025.

Mobile Games

• Call of Duty: Mobile has been downloaded over 1 billion times in 5 years.

• On October 26, Honor of Kings repeated its own DAU record. Over 100 million people logged into the game. This was due to the project’s ninth anniversary.

• Goddess of Victory: Nikke earned $890.6 million in Gross Revenue two years after release. 58.4% of all revenue was generated by Japanese users.

• GDEV reported that the browser game Hero Wars: Dominion Era has earned more than $650 million since its release in October 2016. This figure includes revenue from mobile platforms. Apparently, this is the highest-earning browser game in the world.

• Reverse: 1999 earned $98.7 million in Net Revenue in its first year after Western release, according to AppMagic. In reality, this figure is likely higher.

• Pikmin Bloom earned $63.1 million in Net Revenue over three years of operation, according to AppMagic. $33.1 million (53% of total revenue) was earned in the last year. 68% of revenue comes from Japan.

• Pokemon TCG Pocket, launched on October 30 this year, has already surpassed $50 million in Net Revenue, according to AppMagic. 43% of revenue comes from Japan, 27% from the USA. On November 9, the game’s daily revenue was $5.56 million. The game has been downloaded more than 17 million times. This is the second most successful mobile game launch in the franchise after Pokemon GO.

• Royal Kingdom has earned more than $20.5 million during its soft launch since April 2023. 74% of this amount was paid by British users. The game will be released worldwide on November 21.

• Since its release on October 17, the mobile Age of Empires has earned $13.89 million (as of November 11), reports Chinese publication GameLook. According to AppMagic, the game has more than 5 million installations worldwide.

• Ludus: Merge Arena from Cypriot Top App Games has reached a monthly revenue of $2 million. Since its release in October 2023, the game has been downloaded more than 3 million times.

• DAU in Roblox has exceeded 88.9 million people. The biggest growth is due to people over 13 years old.

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GSD & GfK: The UK gaming market grew by 3.2% YoY in October 2024

GSD is reporting only the fact sales numbers were received from partners. There are partners (like Nintendo), who are not sharing the digital sales numbers, which might affect the overall picture.

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Game Sales

• 2.9 million copies of games were sold in the country in October. It’s 3.2% higher than a year earlier.

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 holds a solid first place. Sales in the UK are 11% worse than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III due to the game’s appearance on Game Pass. However, considering only PlayStation systems, the game is selling 24% better than its predecessor when comparing initial sales. 75% of all sales are on PlayStation; 15% on PC; 10% on Xbox.

• EA Sports FC 25 is in second place. Sales dynamics in October are 14% worse compared to the previous part.

• Dragon Ball: Sparkling! Zero in the UK is 80% higher than Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot for the same period. DBZ: Kakarot set a series record for sales in the first 4 weeks in 2020.

• Undisputed - a boxing simulator from independent Steel City Interactive - is in 4th place. It’s the second best-selling sports game in the UK this year (surpassing F1 24; NBA 2K25; EA Sports College Football 25), and it sold better than Tekken 8. The most surprising thing is that this is the studio’s first game, and the founders had no previous experience in game development.

• The Silent Hill 2 remake sold 32% worse than the Dead Space remake and 62% worse than the Resident Evil 4 remake.

• Among other new releases - Mario Party Jamboree (9th place); Sonic X Shadows Generations (10th place) - initial sales are 150% better than Sonic Superstars but 21% worse than Sonic Frontiers. One of the Game of the Year candidates - Metaphor: Refantazio - debuted at 12th place.

Hardware and Accessories Sales

• Console sales increased by 14% compared to last month - up to 144k systems sold. But this is still 18% less than in October last year.

• PlayStation 5 grew by 27% compared to last month, a decrease of 18% compared to last year. Nintendo Switch sales increased by 13% compared to last month, a decrease of 18% compared to last year. Xbox Series is doing worse - the console sold 7% worse in October than the previous month and 17% worse than the previous year.

• 681 thousand accessories were sold in the UK last month, which is 16% more than last year. The leader is DualSense.

Source - GamesIndustry.biz

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Famitsu: Super Mario Party Jamboree leads Japanese physical sales chart in October 2024

Famitsu only accounts for physical sales.

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Game Sales

• Super Mario Party Jamboree cartridges were purchased over 227,500 times in the first two weeks of October.

• Unusually for Japan, the top 10 includes 7 PlayStation 5 games. In second place is Metaphor: ReFantazio with 133,000 copies on PS4 and PS5. This is a record for disc version sales among all new IPs in 2024.

• Combined sales of Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven on PS5, PS4, and Nintendo Switch total 115,000 copies.

• Nintendo accounts for 35.9% of all physical sales in October ($23.3 million); Atlus has 13.2% ($8.4 million).

• 976,500 boxed games for Nintendo Switch were sold in October. This represents 64.4% of the total sales volume.

Hardware Sales

• Nintendo Switch leads in sales - in October, the console was purchased 242,400 times in Japan.

• PlayStation 5 is far behind - 47,600 consoles.

Source - GamesIndustry.biz