devtodev is helping you keep in touch with what’s happening in the game market. Every month we publish an overview of reports on the most popular games worldwide, top-grossing games, successful releases, favorite video game types, trends, etc. This overview is prepared by Dmitriy Byshonkov - the author of the GameDev Reports by devtodev Telegram channel. You can read the December and January reports.
Table of Content
- Newzoo: Metaverse & Blockchain trends of 2022
- Stream Hatchet: Streaming Gaming Market Landscape in 2021
- GameRefinery:h 2022 trends
- Nintendo Switch surpassed the 103.5M copies sold milestone
- Sensor Tower: 20% of metaverse games are mobile
- Sensor Tower: Fire Emblem Heroes became the most profitable Nintendo Mobile title
- AppMagic: Top Mobile Games of January 2022 by Revenue and Downloads
- App Annie: Germany Gaming Market Report 2021
- Sensor Tower: The US Gamers spent $4.4B on games with money & treasure theme in 2021
- GameRefinery: Users motivations in Games (February 2022)
- SocialPeta: 2021 Mobile Gaming Ad Market Overview
- NPD: Sales figures of Gaming hardware in the US in January 2022 was the best in the last 13 years
- Voodoo exceeds 6B+ in downloads
- Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games in January 2022
- Sensor Tower: Top Mobile Games by Downloads in January 2022
- NPD: There were 228.7M Mobile Gamers in the US and Canada in 2021
- Sensor Tower: Call of Duty: Mobile earned more than $1.5B
- StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: Twitch had more than 2B hours watched in January 2022
Newzoo: Metaverse & Blockchain trends of 2022
Stream Hatchet: Streaming Gaming Market Landscape in 2021
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Users have spent 21% more time in 2021 watching gaming streams.
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Twitch is the main platform for gaming streams. YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming are far behind.
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In 2021 Twitch reached 24.3B of viewed hours. YouTube Gaming - 5B hours, Facebook Gaming - 4.8B hours.
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Battle Royale, open-world games, and MOBA are leading the genre’s top.
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GTA V is the main game of the year with 2.7B of viewed hours. League of Legends is second (2.01B of hours), Garena Free Fire is third (1.23B of hours). There are 3 mobile games in the top-10 - except Garena Free Fire - PUBG Mobile & Mobile Legends: Bang Bang reached the top.
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By Stream Hatchet assumptions, streams earned $811M in Twitch in 2021. There have been around 76.3 thousand streamers on the platform last year.
GameRefinery: 2022 trends
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There will be a lot of AAA mobile games in 2022 with cross-platform functionality.
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New types of gacha will appear in mobile titles.
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Events and mini-games will be more developed and will utilize meta heavily.
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Blockchain games will increase their presence in the market.
Nintendo Switch surpassed the 103.5M copies sold milestone
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Currently, it’s the most successful home console from Nintendo. The previous record was held by Wii (101.63M). If we’ll consider handhelds too, then the clear leader is Nintendo DS with 154.02M consoles sold.
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During the first 9 months of 2021, Nintendo sold 18.95M Nintendo Switch. It’s 21.4% lower than in the same period of 2020.
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The best game in 2021 by sales was Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Pokémon Shining Pearl. They’ve sold 13.97M times.
Sensor Tower: 20% of metaverse games are mobile
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Out of 552 games on the market that are using the “metaverse” word in the description, 107 are mobile.
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In June 2021 only 2 apps added “metaverse” to their description or title. From November 2021 to January 2022 developers of 86 apps did it.
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23% of the overall amount of metaverse games are mentioning cryptocurrencies.
Sensor Tower: Fire Emblem Heroes became the most profitable Nintendo Mobile title
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For 5 years since its launch, the game earned $959M.
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Japan is responsible for $523M of overall revenue. The US brought $308M.
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The second Nintendo Mobile game by revenue - Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp - is far away with $267M of revenue.
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games of January 2022 by Revenue and Downloads
Revenue
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PUBG Mobile is first (again). The game revenue in January was $187M.
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The top-grossing game on iOS was Honor of Kings with $179M of revenue. There is a probability that the game had an opportunity to overcome Honor of Kings, but AppMagic is not tracking alternative Chinese App Stores.
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Lineage W was first on Android with $66.5M of revenue.
Downloads
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Garena Free Fire was downloaded 24.4M times - this is a solid first place.
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Interesting, that just after Battle Royale Subway Surfers appeared. The game will celebrate its 10 years anniversary this year.
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Coloring Match was the top downloaded game on iOS with 6.2M installs.
App Annie: Germany Gaming Market Report 2021
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In 2021 German citizens spent $4B on mobile apps. $2.81B of this sum was spent on games. Growth by revenue to 2019 is about 62%.
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The increase in gaming revenue in 2021 was about $0.5B - it’s just a little bit less than in 2020 ($0.58B).
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823M of games were downloaded in 2021 by German users. If we’ll compare it to 2019, growth will be 8%.
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The most popular game of Gen Z is Roblox, Millenials prefer Candy Crush Saga, while boomers and Gen X representatives prefer New Quizduel.
Sensor Tower: The US Gamers spent $4.4B on games with money & treasure theme in 2021
- Sensor Tower analytics are referring to Coin Master & Bingo Blitz as money-themed or treasure-themed games.
Theme
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The top growing theme in 2021 in the US was connected with animals/insects - it showed growth by 904% in 2021. But, worth mentioning, that volume is small - only $26.5M.
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The second theme by growth is sports/aesthetics, which showed +274% per year. On the third place was hunting theme with +226%.
Setting
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The top-growing setting of 2021 in the US was a historical one. It showed +32% per year and reached $1.4B.
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In second place is high fantasy (+14.4% and $5.4B of revenue). The third place belongs to sci-fi (+6.6% and $2.4B of revenue).
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The setting by revenue was a modern one. Games with such a setting earned $6.3B in 2021
GameRefinery: Users motivations in Games (February 2022)
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4X-strategies and Tycoon/Crafting Games appeal to the same wish of people to optimize resources. People between the age of 25-44 years are usually playing that kind of games, while more complex 4X-Strategies are mostly preferred by men and more casual Tycoon/Crafting games - by women.
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Every casual game, that was in top-100 grossing in the US in the last 2 years, had decoration or renovation meta in it.
The full version of the report is available here
SocialPeta: 2021 Mobile Gaming Ad Market Overview
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The number of advertisers growth declined from +44% in 2020 to +5% in 2021.
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On average, one creative life is 32.5 days.
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The majority of advertisers belong to the casual gaming segment. The smallest competition in the educational segment.
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The average CPM on Facebook increased by 34%. In the US it exceeded $28 (+93% YoY).
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The average CPC for mobile games ads in 2021 was $2.88 (+81% YoY); the average CTR - 1.28% (-29% YoY); the average CPM - $20.99 (+34% YoY).
The report also shows an extensive analysis of mobile creatives. Trends:
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Hardcore genres are using creatives with casual gameplay.
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Celebrities are still working great.
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Casual games creatives are made for the female audience.
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Casual genres are being promoted by easy-to-understand creatives that catch attention in the first seconds.
NPD: Sales figures of Gaming hardware in the US in January 2022 was the best in the last 13 years
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American users spent $4.7B on games in January 2022. It’s 2% lower than a year before.
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Revenue for hardware sales increased by 22% YoY and reached $390M. It’s the best result since January 2009 ($447M).
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PlayStation 5 became the best console of the month in terms of both system sales and revenue. Xbox Series is second.
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Pokémon Legends: Arceus was the chart leader, Call of Duty: Vanguard, and Monster Hunter: Rise took second and third places.
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Accessory spending decreased by 15% to $185M. The most popular accessory was Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller
Voodoo exceeds 6B+ in downloads
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There are more than 200 projects in the French publisher portfolio.
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The most successful product by downloads is Helix Jump with 800M+ downloads.
Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games in January 2022
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PUBG Mobile is the leader again. The project earned $237M, 64% of which came from China. The US is responsible for 8% of revenue, and Turkey - for 7%.
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Honor of Kings from the very same Tencent reached second place with $233.2M of revenue. The majority (96%) of it came from China, an additional 2% - from Taiwan.
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January was a good month for Genshin Impact, which revenues reached $208.7M. It’s 37% higher than a year before.
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Overall, in January 2022, the mobile gaming market earned $7.4B, which is 7% lower than in January 2021. The US is responsible for $2.1B of this amount or 28%, Japan generated 19.3% of global revenues, and China was responsible for 17.8%. But should mention, that Sensor Tower is not tracking alternative stores.
Sensor Tower: Top Mobile Games by Downloads in January 2022
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Garena Free Fire is on top with 24M of downloads. An increase to the previous year is 51.6%. Countries with the most impact are India (25.5% of overall downloads), and Brazil (11.7%).
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Evergreen Subway Surfers is second with 23.7M of downloads (+58.6% YoY). 20.7% of overall downloads came from India, 7% - from the US.
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In January 2022, games were downloaded 5.2B times. An increase to January 2021 is 2.8%. Top-3 countries by downloads are India (761.8M - 14.6% of overall downloads), the US (14.6%), and Brazil (8.2%).
NPD: There were 228.7M Mobile Gamers in the US and Canada in 2021
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Despite the large number, the number of mobile gamers decreased by 4% compared to 2020.
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NPD analytics are sure, that the global gaming market started to normalize after the pandemic.
Sensor Tower: Call of Duty: Mobile earned more than $1.5B
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Getting to the milestone took the game a little bit more than 2 years.
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In 2021 Call of Duty: Mobile revenue increased by 45%. It is connected with the release in China in December 2020.
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The US is the main market for the game. American players spent $647M in Call of Duty: Mobile, which is about 43% of overall revenue. Japan is second, China is third.
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Call of Duty: Mobile is #14 worldwide by revenue in all genres.
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In the shooter category, the game is losing only to Garena Free Fire (#2) and PUBG Mobile (#1).
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The mobile shooters genre is growing. In 2020 genre revenue was $5.7B, while in 2021 it went up to $6.3B.
StreamElements & Rainmaker.gg: Twitch had more than 2B hours watched in January 2022
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Facebook Gaming reached its new record - 617M hours of content watched. The previous peak was in August 2021 - 567M.
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League of Legends (179M), Grand Theft Auto V (149M), and Escape from Tarkov (91M) - are top titles of January by watched hours.
