Weekly Reports Recap: June 6 - June 10
ESA & Google provided 2022 gaming reports; AppMagic gave the Mobile revenue & downloads results in May; Pokemon GO reached $6B revenues lifetime.
This week:
AppMagic: Top Mobile Titles by Downloads & Revenue in May 2022
Sensor Tower: Pokemon GO earned $6B in lifetime
ESA: Gaming Industry portrait in the US in 2022
Google: Mobile Gaming Insights in 2022
GameRefinery: Mobile Games Monetization trends (June 2022)
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AppMagic: Top Mobile Titles by Downloads & Revenue in May 2022
Downloads
Subway Surfers made it again - the game is on top with 36.9M downloads.
Garena Free Fire is the most popular game on Android in May with 30.6M of downloads.
There are 2 newcomers to top-10 - Apex Legends Mobile & Deliver It 3D. Voodoo publishes the second game and it’s a delivery guy arcade game.
Revenue
Honor of Kings continues to harvest the Chinese market with $167.3M of revenue in May.
Android leader in May by revenue was Lineage W with $55.29M. Overall with App Store the game earned $61.1M
Sensor Tower: Pokemon GO earned $6B in lifetime
In 2021 the game earned $1.3B and became the #7 in the top by revenue. In Q1 2022 Pokemon GO generated $198.2M of revenue and earned #11 in the top-grossing chart.
The closest geolocation AR games by revenue are Dragon Quest Walk ($90.4M) & Jurassic World Alive ($7.2M).
The US is the main market, which is responsible for $2.2B of revenue (36.6%). Japan is second (32.6%), and Germany is the third (5.2%).
Google Play brought Pokemon GO $3.1B (52.3% of overall revenue). App Store was responsible for $2.8B (47.7%).
The game was downloaded 678M times since the launch. 123.2M of downloads (18.2%) came from the US. Brazil & India are next.
76.3% of overall downloads came from Google Play.
ESA: Gaming Industry portrait in the US in 2022
66% of the US people are playing games at least two times per week.
The average US gamer age is 33 years. 76% of all players are older than 18.
97% of Americans are sure that games are useful. 89% think that they help to develop skills. The majority is positive that games help to relieve stress, get joy, make your brain work, and inspire.
The younger the player more often it plays for the excitement. As the time passes another motivation strikes - gamers are trying to quality spend their free time, develop some skills & use their brains.
83% of gamers are playing with friends online or in person.
70% of the Americans are playing on smartphones, 52% - on consoles, 43% - on PC, 26% - on tablets, 7% - on VR-devices. 60% of gamers are using more than one device.
The most popular genre is Puzzles (65% of players are playing it).
The average American player is spending 13 hours per week on games.
Google: Mobile Gaming Insights in 2022
People are starting playing games because of being bored (56%), having spare time (53%), and needing relaxation (53%).
37% of users are playing two games. Only 2% are playing 7 or more games.
For 83% of gamers, localization is important.
67% of users are sure, that games must have different (including inclusive) characters and stories.
37% of gamers are founding new games through App Store / Google Play search; 35% - because of the social media ads; 34% thanks to friends’ recommendations; 34% - through in-game ads; 33% - with YouTube videos help.
34% of gamers in the last 6 months spent money on in-game currency. 30% have bought characters or/and items. 29% spent their money on unlocking characters or cosmetic items.
Different motivations are driving people when buying gaming items. There is a wish to speed up the progress; an opportunity to make the gaming experience better; a desire to make a collection.
75% are neutral or positive about in-game ads.
Current trends are cross-platform games, cloud gaming, and ESports. Future trends are metaverse, VR, and AR. At least people think so.
GameRefinery: Mobile Games Monetization trends (June 2022)
Battle Passes are one of the most popular monetization features in F2P games. It’s used in 60% of top-20% top-grossing mobile titles in the US (iOS).
One of the key factors of success is that battle passes can be integrated without interfering with the core gameplay. Battle passes also are improving retention and working fine with other monetization elements.
In-game shops with gacha-mechanics are even more popular than battle passes. Especially in Japan, where they are implemented in 93% of mobile games from top-20% by revenue.
Gacha-mechanics are evolving consistently. The latest trends are increased transparency of getting the prize conditions & co-op gachas.
Traditional IAP are still widely used in games.