Weekly Reports Recap: January 17 - January 21
Some forecasts by GameAnalytics & Newzoo; Markets 2021 reports & more.
This week:
Drake Star: 1,159 gaming deals happened in 2021
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games Downloads & Revenue in December 2021
GameAnalytics: 7 things to expect in 2022
Sensor Tower: Mobile Action games in the US grew by 69% thanks to Genshin Impact
Newzoo: What to expect in 2022
GSD & GfK: Games, hardware, and accessory sales in the UK in 2021
NPD: The US Gaming market earned $60.4B in 2021
Newzoo: Who is playing Metaverses?
Interpet: 57% of players are interested in NFTs
App Annie: Taiwan & Hong Kong markets overview
If you’d like to receive updates instantly, please, subscribe to the newsletter.
Drake Star: 1,159 gaming deals happened in 2021
The volume of deals exceeded $85B. $37.8B came from M&A activity. Another $34.5 - from Public Markets. The rest $13.1B - from PP.
Out of 1,159 deals, 718 were PP, 299 - M&A, and 142 - Public Markets.
It’s interesting, that most M&A deals happened in the PC\Console segment - 107. The volume is valued at $13.9B, which is just a little bit lower, than Mobile M&A 2021 valuation ($15.5B).
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games Downloads & Revenue in December 2021
Downloads
Rocket League Sideswipe (mobile version of Rocket League) reached first place with 25.7M of installs.
The most downloaded Android game was Garena Free Fire - 22M of downloads. Generally, the game got 24.8M new users in December.
Have a look at Poppy Rope Game. The game was downloaded 19.7M times in December - only on Google Play. It’s 4th place by downloads overall, which is crazy, given the quality of the product.
Revenue
PUBG Mobile is in the first place with $186.7M of revenue.
Lineage W performing great on Android. In December revenue from this platform alone was $81.7M.
GameAnalytics: 7 things to expect in 2022
AR games will grow. GA specialists think that recent Niantic investments will help with it.
Metaverse hype will slow down.
NFT will stay, but the technology needs a killer app. Currently, an ordinary gamer just can’t jump into blockchain gaming.
Privacy control will cause more restrictions. There is a high probability, that Google will show its own privacy-related solution similar to what Apple did in 2021.
There will be more social features in games.
More real-life brands will turn their faces to games.
Header-bidding will kill the Waterfall model in marketing.
Sensor Tower: Mobile Action games in the US grew by 69% thanks to Genshin Impact
The genre revenue in the US reached $966.8M. It’s 68.9% higher than last year.
Growth dynamics is highest among all genres in the US last year.
The largest subgenre of Action game was Open World Adventure, which earned $418.3M and showed 3.5x times growth to 2020. However, the main game of this sub-genre is Genshin Impact, which revenue in 2021 in the US was $406.3M.
The second place by genres revenue growth belongs to Hypercasual titles. They grew by 43.1% (+$111M). Third place is owned by the Tabletop genre (+35.4% - $772.5M overall).
The puzzle genre become the top in terms of absolute revenues. The US users spent $5.1B in Puzzle games in 2021. Casino ($4.8B) and Strategy games ($4.3B) are next.
All genres have seen a decline in downloads in the US in 2021, but sports games experienced the smallest one.
Newzoo: What to expect in 2022
GSD & GfK: Games, hardware, and accessory sales in the UK in 2021
35.8M games (in both digital and physical formats), 3.36M consoles, and 10.6M accessories were sold in the UK in 2021.
Nintendo Switch overpassed PS5 in terms of sales. In November-December, it had about half a million consoles sold, which helped it to reach the top. Consoles sales in the UK in 2021 increased by 14% compared to 2020.
Software sales went down by 16% compared to 2020. But it showed 38% growth if we are talking about 2019. 20.5M copies were bought in digital format, 15.3M - in physical. And the digital share is gradually growing.
FIFA 22 was the most popular game in the UK in 2021. Third place is well-deserved by GTA V - even almost 9 years after launch.
Accessory sales decreased by 6%, reaching 10.6M. The top-selling accessory was DualSense.
NPD: The US Gaming market earned $60.4B in 2021
The new record is settled. It’s 8% more than in 2020.
Software (games, DLC, in-game purchases, subscriptions) revenue was $51.7B or 85% of the overall amount. Growth to the previous year - 7%.
Call of Duty: Vanguard became the top seller in the US. It’s 13 consecutive year when the Call of Duty game is leading the chart.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales webbed to the best exclusive selling game on PlayStation. Pokemon: Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl leading Nintendo exclusive charts. Forza Horizon 5 joins the company on Microsoft systems.
Consoles sales increased by 14% and reached $6B.
Audience spending on accessories didn’t grow dramatically - by 2% only - and reached $2.7B.
Newzoo: Who is playing Metaverses?
Metaverse players are much younger than the average gamer. 27 years vs. 38.
More than a half (59%) users mentioned, that they’re playing Metaverse games (Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft) to socialize.
On average, users are spending around 11 hours per month in Metaverses.
Socialization-driven users are paying more - by 10%.
Metaverse players are spending less time on Facebook, but much more on other social networks - Instagram, Snap, and, of course, TikTok.
Interpet: 57% of players are interested in NFTs
A survey of 1,500 players on PC and Console showed, that the majority will be interested in collecting, buying, and selling in-game items for real money.
45% of respondents mentioned, that it will force them to spend more time playing games.
App Annie: Taiwan & Hong Kong markets overview
Taiwan is #6 in the global country top by revenue. In Q4 2021 users in this country have spent $597M on mobile games. Hong Kong is #12 with $193M revenue in the same period.
MMORPG is the most popular genre in Taiwan by downloads. However, during the last year, its downloads went down by 27%. In Hong Kong, the first place reserved by hypercasual action games, downloads increased by 37% during last year.
As for the revenue, MMORPG is the top-grossing genre in both countries.
Among the most popular games in Taiwan, Harry Potter Magic Awakened has the best Retention metrics. D1 - 52.54%; D7 - 26.04%; D14 - 19.82%.