Weekly Reports Recap - May 24 - May 30
Italian and Iran gaming markets; Mobile App trends; adult Minecraft players & more.
This week was full of interesting numbers and reports:
IIDEA: Italian gaming market in 2020
Cafe Bazaar has 30M MAU and 30M gamers
Liftoff: Casual games CPI grew by 45.2% in a year
Sensor Tower: State of Mobile Gaming 2021 - key insights
Adjust: Mobile app trends 2021 - gaming insights
GameRefinery: Match 3 genre is accountable for 16% of all US iOS games revenue
Niko Partners: China's gaming industry is expected to reach $55B by 2025
NPD Group: The US gaming market has ended its 13-month growth in April
Ultimate Team mode was responsible for 29% of EA revenue in 2020
Newzoo: only 33% of Minecraft players are younger than 20
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IIDEA: Italian gaming market in 2020
IIDEA has published large 87 pages report about the Italian game industry. Key insights:
There are 16,7 million gamers in Italy - it’s 38% of the whole population. Market annual turnover - €2,179 billion.
82% of revenue comes from software; 18% - from hardware.
Surprisingly, but Italy is the console-first country. Consoles responsible for 43% of the revenue; PC games are accounted for 33% and mobile projects generated only 23% of all money.
84% of games bought in 2020 were in digital format.
PC and Console games sales increased by 32,7% in 2020.
62% of children between the age of 11 to 14 play video games on their mobile phones.
There are about 160 gaming studios in Italy right now with more than 1,600 people working in the industry.
The gaming industry in Italy is growing. 73% of studios are working for more than 4 years. One-third of Italian companies have more than 10 employees.
Companies with >€500,000 revenue per year increased from 2018 - there are 26% now compared to 17% 3 years ago.
Cafe Bazaar has 30M MAU and 30M gamers
Cafe Bazaar is the largest Android Store in Iran. Recently the company shared some info about the local industry and its own performance.
AdColony Inventory tracked that the Iranian gaming market in 2020 was about $475 million in turnover.
By the end of 2020, there were more than 100,000 apps. 18,000 of them were games. Currently, the platform has 20,000+ developers and many of them are based outside of Iran.
The audience of Cafe Bazaar is 45M+ people. MAU - 30M; DAU - 6,6M.
Top downloaded games are on the left; top-grossing - on the right.
There are 30M gamers using Cafe Bazaar. How often, however, is unclear.
About 30% of Cafe Bazaar users have made in-app purchases at least once.
From 2019 the Cafe Bazaar game revenue increased by 30%.
The top revenue genres at the platform are strategy, arcade, and RPG. Most downloaded - casual, puzzle, and action titles.
Cafe Bazaar expects to see more mid-core gamers with an increasing audience and market maturity.
Liftoff: Casual games CPI grew by 45.2% in a year
Data were collected from early March 2020 to late February 2021. The full version of the report is available here.
Average CPI for casual games grew by 45,2% - from $1.35 to $1.96 through last year. Liftoff connects it to increasing competition; pre-IDFA tests and users increased distraction.
Day 7 ROAS decreased from 12.4% in 2019-2020 to 10.6% in 2020-2021. Must mention, that the average Day 7 ROAS across all apps is 18.8%, which means that casual games are performing below the apps market. Day 30 ROAS for casual games decreased sufficiently - from 37.1% in 2019-2020 to 29.6% in 2020-2021.
The most expensive subgenre is Lifestyle (Episode - Choose Your Story; Design Home). Its CPI is $2.57. Other subgenres showing $1.92-$1.94 CPIs.
Average CPI during the coronavirus increased dramatically. From $1.21 in April 2020 to $3.19 in February 2021.
The average Android CPI is $1.15; iOS - $4.30. However, the average CPI on iOS increased by 47% in a year, while Android average CPI skyrocketed by 120%. Liftoff specialists connect it with IDFA.
Lifestyle games showing the best ROAS. They have Day 7 ROAS - 22.5%; Day 30 ROAS - 40.6%.
Sensor Tower: State of Mobile Gaming 2021 - key insights
The full 78 pages report is available via this link. In the full version, you can find the analysis of the main regions and game genre, monetization, and ad trends.
Results:
The gaming industry is growing. In Q1 2021 it showed 25% growth YoY and exceeded the average growth rate of the last two years. Users have spent $22 billion during the first 2021 quarter.
The US is still the top country by revenue when it comes to mobile games. In Q1 2021 the US mobile game’s revenue reached $6.1 billion (+34% YoY). In China, this number is significantly lower - $3.9 billion - but Sensor Tower is not tracking the alternative Android Stores that are very popular in the country.
Best countries by downloads - India, US, Brazil, Indonesia, and Russia.
Forecast:
By 2023 mobile games revenue will reach $117 billion. $67 billion will come from App Store and $50 million - from Google Play.
Mobile game downloads will exceed 67 billion by 2023.
European and Southeast Asia markets will show a faster growth rate than the market overall.
Adjust: Mobile app trends 2021 - gaming insights
Adjust has divided hypercasual and non-hypercasual games into two different categories, assuming, that the audience is contrasting.
33% of all downloaded apps in 2020 were games.
Adjust tells that the mobile gaming market was $165 billion in 2020. However, there is a feeling that analytics used the wrong source. Because Newzoo tells that the whole gaming market in 2020 was $159.3 billion with mobile part of $77.2 billion included.
Hypercasual games installs increased in 2020 by 43% compared to 2019. Non-hypercasual games showed a 26% increase.
The number of sessions in hypercasual games increased by 36% in 2020 YoY. In non-hypercasual games, this metric showed a 27% growth rate.
The average number of game sessions per active user in hypercasual games is 1.4. In non-hypercasual games, it’s 2.2.
Adjust shared insights on time spent in games by days.
Day 0: HC - 8 minutes; non-HC - 24 minutes;
Day 1: HC - 15 minutes; non-HC - 53 minutes;
Day 3: HC - 11 minutes; non-HC - 48 minutes;
Day 7: HC - 9 minutes; non-HC - 47 minutes;
Day 30: HC - 7 minutes; non-HC - 45 minutes.
Average D1 Retention in gaming is around 30%. Hypercasual games are showing a D1 Ret of 27%. D7 Hypercasual Retention is falling to 7.5%, while by D30 only 1.75% of users are still playing the game.
GameRefinery: Match 3 genre is accountable for 16% of all US iOS games revenue
The full report is available here.
In Q1 2021 Match 3 was responsible for 16% of all US iOS games revenue.
Project Makeover is the only project in years to jumped to the top-5 Match 3 games in the US.
Homescapes is the only game in the top-5 (except Project Makeover), that managed to increase the revenue compared to Q1 2020. However, the growth rate is small - just 0,64%.
Royal Match and Project Makeover are the latest novas in the genre. It’s also worth looking at Lily’s Garden, Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, and Property Brothers Home Design.
Most great Match 3 games are using: recurring and non-recurring live events; special rewards for them; limited IAP offers; special live events currency; special levels/modes outside of the main campaign.
Niko Partners: China's gaming industry is expected to reach $55B by 2025
By the end of 2025, there will 781 million gamers in China.
China’s gaming industry revenue at the end of 2020 was valued at $43.1 billion. $29.2 billion of this sum belongs to mobile gaming (it’s showing 30,9% YoY growth).
There were 681.7 million gamers in China in 2020.
PC market in China valued at $13.9 billion (-4.9% YoY). Niko Partners analytic team is expecting it back to grow in 2022.
As of 2020, there were 325.4 million PC gamers.
Chinese developers revenue in Western countries increased by 36.7%. It’s essentially because of MiHoYo’s Genshin Impact success.
NPD Group: The US gaming market has ended its 13-month growth in April
US gamers spent $4.7 billion on gaming products in April 2021. It’s 2% less than a year before.
Gaming hardware showed the most dramatic fell - by 30% YoY. People spent $296 million on it in April.
As for the gaming products - games, subscription, cloud gaming e.t.c - they showed 12% YoY growth.
Accessory sales dropped by 23% to $168 million. The most successful peripheral was DualSense.
Top-selling April console in US - Nintendo Switch. Top-selling game - MLB: The Show 21.
Ultimate Team mode was responsible for 29% of EA revenue in 2020
In 2017 mode revenue was $775 million. In 2020 the number doubled and grew to $1.62 billion. It’s 29% of the whole EA revenue.
In 2018 Ultimate Team mode was responsible for 28% of the whole company revenue. It’s the previous record.
Ultimate Team is the multiplayer mode with CCG (Collecting Card Game) elements in FIFA, Madden, NHL, NBA, and UFC. Many times EA was accused of exploitation of casino mechanics in this mode.
Newzoo: only 33% of Minecraft players are younger than 20
Newzoo shared a big article related to open-world games that can be found here. What’s interesting:
16.7% of top-1000 games on consoles have open-world. On PC there are 18.7% of such games.
In April 2021 the largest MAU was in Call of Duty/Call of Duty Warzone - 23.1 million users. Fortnite is second with 22.8 million. And third is evergreen GTA V - 20 million MAU.
Almost 3/4 of open-world games on PC are adventures or RPG.
26.6% of PC gamers have played sandbox games with open-world in April 2021. On consoles, this share is smaller - 20%.
Only 33% of Minecraft's audience is younger than 20. The core audience (41%) is at the age of 21 to 35. For example, The Elder Scrolls has 26% of users younger than 20 and 50% of users in the age of 21 to 35.
50% of the audience of the top-5 open-world games is in the US and Western Europe.