Weekly Reports Recap: May 9 - May 13
Sensor Tower is reporting about Mobile Gaming Market decline for the first time in history; 10 top gaming companies are responsible for 65% of gaming revenues & other hot topics of the week.
This week:
Newzoo: Gaming Live Streaming Audience will reach 1.4B users in 2025
Omdia: Consumers' awareness of Cloud Gaming increased, but it didn't help sales
Tenjin & GameAnalytics: The Best Ad Networks for Hypercasual Titles and Retention benchmarks
GfK & GSD: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga tops UK charts in April
Sensor Tower: Mobile Gaming Market Revenue dropped for the first time in history
Newzoo: 10 largest gaming companies generated 65% of overall revenue in 2021
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Newzoo: Gaming Live Streaming Audience will reach 1.4B users in 2025
921.2M users will watch gaming live streams this year. It’s 13.8% more than a year before.
In 2023 the number of users watching how others play will be more than a billion.
Twitch is the largest platform for live streaming. More than 20 billion hours of content were watched on the platform in 2021 (+26% YoY). More than 31M users are visiting the platform daily.
China is the country with the largest live streaming audience. By 2025 there will be 267.5M of gaming content watchers.
58% of live streaming fans are younger than 30. 61% are male.
Omdia: Consumers' awareness of Cloud Gaming increased, but it didn't help sales
In April 2022 Omdia asked 3,700 users from the US, UK, and Germany about Cloud Gaming services. And compared results with a similar survey made in November 2020.
44% of respondents now know what Cloud Gaming is. A year and a half ago only 14% had such understanding.
Despite the increase in awareness, it didn’t affect sales much. The number of Cloud Gaming services subscribers since November 2020 increased by 2%. A similar percentage increased the number of people, who are planning to subscribe to any Cloud Gaming service.
By 26% - the largest increase - shows the category that knows about Cloud Gaming, but has no plans to use it.
Tenjin & GameAnalytics: The Best Ad Networks for Hypercasual Titles and Retention benchmarks
Applovin, Mintegral, and Unity Ads are on top of the ad networks by money spent on hypercasual ads.
The US, Japan, and the UK are countries where advertisers spend the most money.
Top 2% hypercasual games median D1 Retention on iOS is 45%. On Android - 40%.
Top 2% hypercasual games median D7 Retention on iOS is 17%. On Android - 13%.
GfK & GSD: Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga tops UK charts in April
Last month 92 thousand consoles were sold in the UK (-38% YoY). PlayStation 5 made it to the top with a 59% increase in sales compared to March. However, year-to-year dynamics are worse - in April 2021 sales were 51% higher.
Second place is taken by Nintendo Switch. Xbox Series S|X is third with a 59% decrease in sales MoM.
Accessory sales dynamic is decreasing too - by 19.2% to March 2022 and 13.7% to the previous year. The leader is a white DualSense.
In April 2.3M games were sold in the UK. It’s 18% less than in March 2022, but 12.5% more than in April 2021. 36.9% of sales are from physical copies.
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the first by sales, Elden Ring & Grand Theft Auto V are next.
Sensor Tower: Mobile Gaming Market Revenue dropped for the first time in history
The decline happened in Q1 2022, in which users spent 6% less than in Q1 2021 - $21.2B. However, if we’ll compare results with Q1 2020 then growth will be 20%.
Lineage W is the only new game in Q1 2022 chart by revenue.
Revenue from the largest markets declined in Q1 2022. In the US - by 10% YoY; in Japan - by 18%; in China - by 1%. Contrary, South Korea (+3% YoY), and Taiwan (+7% YoY) showed growth.
The share of alternative markets in the overall revenue structure increased by 2% in the last 5 years. Sensor Tower analytics are positive that it’s connected to the publishers’ interest in emerging markets.
Taiwan in Q1 2022 ousted Germany from fifth place in the largest mobile markets. India showed 74% growth in Q1 2022 by revenue.
The number of downloads continues to grow slowly. In Q1 2022 downloads increased by 2%.
Downloads charts are much more diverse than the revenue top. In Q1 2022 seven new titles appeared there.
Newzoo: 10 largest gaming companies generated 65% of overall revenue in 2021
10 largest gaming companies earned $126B in 2021, which is 10.2% higher than in 2020.
Companies from 11 to 25 places increased their share by revenue as well.
Tencent earned $32.2B in 2021 (+9.9% YoY). It’s 16.7% of the overall gaming market ($192.7B according to Newzoo).
Sony is the only company in the top-10 that showed a decline in revenue (-2.3% YoY). The reason lies in console shortages. Meanwhile, the main competitors are showing growth - Nintendo by 1.9%; Microsoft - by 9.6%.
Sea Limited showed a 114.3% growth in revenue compared to 2020, which occurred thanks to Garena Free Fire.
If the deal between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard happens, Microsoft will overcome Sony by revenue and will reach second place. Take-Two Interactive acquisition of Zynga will place them to the 9 place.