Weekly Reports Recap: July 25 - July 29
Steam games sales are surging; Newzoo is more pessimistic about 2022 game revenue than before; non-gaming apps in the US on App Store earned more than games for the first time in history.
This week:
VG Insights: Steam Games Market size will drop in 2022
Newzoo: The Gaming Market will reach $196,8B in 2022
Twitter: Users twitted more about games in H1 2022
Globant & YouGov: 52% of gamers in the US believe that metaverse will change the gaming industry
Sensor Tower: Mobile non-gaming Apps for the first time in the history of the US App Store earned more than games
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VG Insights: Steam Games Market size will drop in 2022
The methodology covers only Premium game sales and does not include IAP.
In 2021 the Steam games sales were $6.5B. It’s 74% growth in 3 years.
In the first half of 2022 Steam sales are outrunning 2021 benchmarks - $3.1B versus $3B. But since April the pace of 2022 sales started to lose to 2021. There are various reasons for this: significant releases postponed, decrease in disposable income in developed countries, increasing availability of consoles, and isolation of the Russian PC market.
However, there are positive signals. There is a large probability, that in 2023 Steam will reach a new record in sales. Graphic cards are becoming more accessible to the crypto market crash, games prices went a little bit higher. Plus, some major ex-console exclusives will be released on PC (thanks to PlayStation).
Newzoo: The Gaming Market will reach $196,8B in 2022
Despite the recession forecasts, Newzoo analytics are sure, that in 2022 the gaming market will grow by 2.1% to the previous year. However, they’ve corrected April’s forecast, which was telling about more than $200B of revenue.
There will be 3.2B gamers by the end of 2022 in the world.
Mobile games are responsible for $103.5B (53% of the market) of revenue, and growth from the previous year is 5.1%.
PC segment is about 21% of the market ($40,4B), in 2022 it will grow by 1.6% from 2021.
The console market will drop by 2.2% from the previous year to $52.9B. It’s connected to the AAA game delays and lack of consoles.
The North American market will grow only by 0.5% from the previous year to $51.3B. The European market will go down by 0.03% to $34.1B.
MENA market will show growth of 10.8% to $7.1B. LATAM will grow to $8.7B (+6.9% YoY).
Newzoo forecasts that the gaming market will reach $225.7B by the end of 2025 with a CAGR of 4.7% from 2020 to 2025.
The number of gamers will increase to 3.534B in 2025. CAGR will be about 4.2%.
The fastest growing markets by the number of users in 2022 will be MENA (+8.2% YoY - 488M); LATAM (+4.8% YoY - 315M), and Asia-Pacific (+4.2% YoY - 1.746B).
Twitter: Users twitted more about games in H1 2022
An increase from the previous year was 36%. Users wrote about 1.5B tweets about games in H1 2022.
Genshin Impact became the most popular game on Twitter in H1 2022. World & Ensemble Stars! are next. The Final Fantasy series is in fourth place.
Japan, the US, and South Korea are leaders when it comes to gaming tweets.
Globant & YouGov: 52% of gamers in the US believe that metaverse will change the gaming industry
The survey canvassed 1,000 adult gamers from the US, who are spending more than 3 hours per week playing games on PC, Consoles, or Mobile. Mobile-only players were excluded.
People associate Meta (73%), Epic Games / Fortnite (27%), Roblox (21%), The Sandbox (15%), and Niantic (10%) with metaverse experience.
Only 35% are accepting ads in the metaverse. 40% mentioned that they won’t be happy with ads in virtual worlds. 46% of respondents will feel uncomfortable if ads will track their eyes or head movement.
Only 11% were interested in earning in the metaverse. 49% would prefer just playing. Other 40% will be glad to mix both earn and play.
81% of respondents never interacted with NFT or cryptocurrencies before. About a half (45%) do not want to see metaverse and crypto to be connected.
Sensor Tower: Mobile non-gaming Apps for the first time in the history of the US App Store earned more than games
Mobile Games revenue is showing a negative trend. Despite this, in May 2022 they’ve earned 50% more than in January 2019 - before the pandemic.
In June 2022 non-gaming apps were responsible for 50.3% of App Store revenue. Five years ago games accounted for 2/3 of overall revenue.
However, the report itself is all about downloads.
Subway Surfers is the most popular game of Q2 2022. It was downloaded more than 80M times during the quarter, the last time the game saw this number was in 2014. The game was downloaded 1.8B times - it’s the most popular mobile game in the world.
Garena Free Fire managed to reach 70M+ downloads for the third consecutive quarter. Stumble Guys is third.
The top 10 most successful publishers have 7 gaming companies: Supersonic Studios, Embracer Group, Azur Interactive, Say Games, AppLovin, Miniclip, and Take-Two Interactive.
Game downloads in Q2 2022 in App Store decreased by 2.6% to 2.03B YoY.
Google Play game downloads, in reverse, grew by 0.6% to 11.91B compared to Q2 2021.
India is the largest download market, reaching almost 7B in Q2 2022. The US, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia are next.