Game Market Overview. The Most Important Reports Published in March 2022

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 January and February reports.

Table of Content

• AppsFlyer: IAP on iOS fell down by 35% in 2021
• App Annie: Indian Gaming Market in 2021
• Ampere Analysis: The Console Gaming Market reached $60B in 2021
• AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in February 2022
• There are 44,000 developers in Steam - who are they?
• Sensor Tower: Monetisation in 2021
• Omdia: Cloud Gaming Market Grew by 3 times in 2021
• Steam: 2021 in numbers
• Apptica: Released Games in winter 2021-2022 on iOS report
• NonFungible & L’Atelier BNP Paribas: Blockchain & NFT 2021 Report
• Tapjoy: 50% of gamers prefer games with ad monetization
• NPD Group: US Gaming Market Revenue fell by 6% in February 2022
• UKIE: British Game Industry Overview
• Global Industry Analysts: By 2026 the Gaming Mobile Market will reach $140B
• SELL: French Gaming Market grew by 13.5% since 2019
• Unity: Unity-based games revenue increased by 30% in 2021
• Belgian Games: Belgian Gaming Market reached €600M in 2021
• data.ai: Mobile Games earned $22B in Q1 2022
• Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games of February 2022
• Newzoo: Gaming Peripheral Market Research

AppsFlyer: IAP on iOS fell down by 35% in 2021

• The peak of falling down was in June 2021. In the same period, Android IAP revenues grew by 10%.

• Gaming companies spent $14.5B in 2021 for users acquisition. This number doesn’t include China.

• Ad revenues after ATT implementation on iOS fell by 2% but increased on Android by 55%.

• ATT opt-in rate in the US is 39%. The highest one was in Vietnam, where 65% of users agreed to share their personal data.

• 84% of gaming apps are using SKAdNetwork now.

Source

App Annie: Indian Gaming Market in 2021

• Users downloaded 26.7B apps and spent $417M on them in 2021.

• 9.3B of downloads and $165M of revenue belongs to the gaming apps. Worth mentioning, that Newzoo values the Indian mobile market at $2.11B (13x times more). Hard to say why there is such a big difference.

• The mobile Indian market in 2021 fell down by $4M.

Source

Ampere Analysis: The Console Gaming Market reached $60B in 2021

• By the end of this year, it will reach $61.1B.

• Growth is driven by new consoles sales & subscription services.

• Spendings on games, DLCs, in-app purchases went down by 1%, compared to 2020.

• Sony is controlling 46% of the console gaming market. Nintendo is covering 29% (-2% from 2020), Microsoft - 25% (+1% from 2020).

• Subscription services spendings out of all content spendings are about 19%. There is a major growth from 15% in 2020. In 2022 this number will reach 21%.

• The popularity of boxed games is continuing to decline. In 2021 the share was lower than 30% for the first time in history. In 2022, by Ampere Analysis prediction, it will down to 26%.

Source

AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in February 2022

Revenue:

• Honor of Kings is the leader by overall revenue with $168M.

• First place on Android belongs to Lineage W, which earned on this platform $61M.

• Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle is back to top-10, players spent $61.7M across all platforms in the game in February.

Downloads:

• First place, the second month in a row, taken by Garena Free Fire. It was downloaded 22.5M times.

• Merge Master — Dinosaur Fusion with 22M of downloads is in second place.

• The top iOS game by downloads is Wordle!, a mobile clone of the popular web game Wordle. It managed to get 7.4M of downloads.

Source

There are 44,000 developers in Steam - who are they?

• 75% of them have developed only 1 game. 443 (1%) - more than 10. And only 4 developers released more than 100 games.

• 57% out of all developers in Steam haven’t earned even $1,000. The majority are developers, that released only one game. 1,600 developers earned more than $1M, only 600 of them are relatively big AA/AAA studios.

• 51% of developers are working on Action titles. 5% are working on Sports games.

• 1/3 of developers in Steam are working with publishers. Only 4% (1,900 developers) have tried both releasing by themselves and partnering with a publisher.

Source

Sensor Tower: Monetisation in 2021

• All of the top-grossing games in 2021 had Season Pass. Its popularity covered not only mid-core projects but also Casual ones - Candy Crush Saga, Homescapes, Gardenscapes.

• The majority of projects utilizing NFT or Blockchain are mid-core.

• Half of the top-10 games with gacha are based on popular IPs.

• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang became the largest project with NFT/Blockchain elements. If we’ll talk about games, which were created with NFT/Blockchain in mind, the most number of downloads has Thetan Arena - 7.7M.

Source

Omdia: Cloud Gaming Market Grew by 3 times in 2021

• In 2021 cloud gaming earned $3.7B.

• Omdia analytics forecasts that, by the end of 2022, the market will grow to $5.2B. By the end of 2026, it is expected to reach $11.9B.

• Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has 16.4M subscribers, PlayStation Now - about 4.4M.

Source

Steam: 2021 in numbers

• Platform revenue increased by 27% compared to 2020.

• Average MAU - 132M (12M more than in 2020), DAU - 69M.

• 31.2M new buyers joined Steam in 2021.

• The peak number of users in 2021 is 27.4M. This is the all-time record as well.

• The number of VR games users increased by 11%.

• More PC gamers are using gamepads. In 2020 there were 46.6M, in 2021 this number increased to 48M.

• Summer Sale in Steam in 2021 helped to increase developers revenue by 13% compared to the summer sale in 2020. During the Winter Sale, 2.3M users have bought the game on Steam for the first time.

Source

Apptica: Released Games in winter 2021-2022 on iOS report

• From December 2021 to February 2022, 11.3% of released apps on the App Store were games.

• Action (17.1%), Puzzle (17.1%), and Simulation (12,7%) were top categories during the winter season.

Source

NonFungible & L’Atelier BNP Paribas: Blockchain & NFT 2021 Report

• NFT Games revenue in 2021 was $5.17B.

• Axie Infinity was responsible for more than half of this sum - $3.5B. NBA Top Shot with $827M of revenue is next.

• Metaverses with blockchain elements earned $513.8M.

• Blockchain & NFT industry overall earned about $17.6B. It’s 200 times more than in 2020.

• The number of NFT buyers increased from 75k in 2020 to 2.3M in 2021.

Source

Tapjoy: 50% of gamers prefer games with ad monetization

• In 2021, the number of gamers that prefer watching ads over buying something in games, increased by 138%.

• On average, mobile gamers are spending 10 hours per week on games.

• About half of respondents (49%) are playing mobile games multiple times per day.

• Puzzles are the most popular genre among all age groups.

• 60% of users are finding new games through the ads. 39% are trying new games on friend’s advice, 33% are following Store’s recommendations.

• Rewarded Video is the most appreciated format (53% of people like it).

• 39% of users are not willing to share their personal data in any case.

Source

NPD Group: US Gaming Market Revenue fell by 6% in February 2022

• February gaming market revenue resulted in $4.4B.

• Users’ spending on hardware went down by 27%, compared to 2020. The revenue was $295M.

• Nintendo Switch took first place both in terms of revenue and the number of consoles sold. Xbox Series is second.

• Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus are top-sellers in February.

• Revenue from accessories declined by 7% to $180M, compared to 2020. The best-selling accessory became Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller.

Source

UKIE: British Game Industry Overview

• There are about 24 thousand employees working in the gaming industry in the UK.

• 90% of employees are white people. 67% are men. 61% are under 35.

• 52% of employees prefer hybrid or remote formats of work.

• The number of people with mental health troubles in 2022 increased even compared to pandemic 2020. 38% of game industry workers mentioned that they have depression or anxiety.

Source

Global Industry Analysts: By 2026 the Gaming Mobile Market will reach $140B

• By the end of this year, its volume will be $94.8B.

• The US will be responsible for about $20.3B of this amount.

• The main drivers mentioned are increasing consumption of high-end smartphones and market growth leading by already large (China), and evolving markets (India, Mexico).

Source

SELL: French Gaming Market grew by 13.5% since 2019

• Its current valuation is €5.6B.

• In 2021, compared to 2020, the PC market grew by 5% to €1.4B. The console market was up by 1%, while the mobile market slightly fell by the same amount.

• The console market is responsible for 49% of overall French gaming revenue - €2,7B. It’s a record since 2008. About 2.37M of consoles were sold in France in 2021.

• The volume of hardware (PC & Console) sold was €1,7B in 2021 (+22% YoY). Revenue by game sales, however, declined by 11% compared to 2020 and resulted in €1,9B. 24M games were sold on PC & Consoles last year.

• 82% of all game sales were digital.

• Accessories sales for PC & Consoles increased by 11% to €840M.

• The most popular games in France in 2021 were FIFA 22 (1.59M sold copies), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (503K sold copies), and FIFA 21 (501K sold copies).

Source

Unity: Unity-based games revenue increased by 30% in 2021

• The number of games made on Unity in 2021 increased by 93%. The number of Unity developers increased by 31%.

• The number of Unity application growth in different genres is about 7-8%, sometimes, it’s even showing a negative dynamic (in the Casino genre, for example). The largest increase of Unity usage is shown in hypercasual projects - growth was 137%.

• The base for the IAP revenue of Unity-based projects is the US and EMEA regions. The same applies to the ads.

• IAP revenue in hypercasual projects increased by 162% last year. And only by 9% increased the ad revenue. The RPG genre is watching the declining trend - revenue fell by 5%.

• The average transaction size in 2021 increased.

• The majority of game developers are focused on a single project. However, those who operate several projects are earning more.

• Unity showed an average Retention in different genres. The largest average D1 in Word games (36%); largest average D7 has Board games (15.36%); largest average D30 has card games (7.67%).

Source

Belgian Games: Belgian Gaming Market reached €600M in 2021

• After the record 2020, it grew by an additional 4% in 2021.

• Interesting that the share of digital games sales in Belgium is just about 42%. 58% of people are still preferring to buy physical copies.

• 147M games were downloaded on iOS and Android in 2021.

• The top hardware sold in Belgium in 2021 was Nintendo. PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch Lite are next.

• The top games by sales in 2021 are FIFA 22, Grand Theft Auto V, and FIFA 21.

Source

data.ai: Mobile Games earned $22B in Q1 2022

• It’s 73% of Google Play and 60% of iOS overall revenue during the period.

• Quarter revenue of mobile games increased by 42% compared to Q1 2020.

• The US, China, and Japan are the largest markets. The highest growth dynamic showed APAC region with 10% rise QoQ.

• In terms of downloads, the market increased by 45% compared to Q1 2019. At Google Play, 14B games (+15% YoY) were downloaded during Q1 2022. It’s 44% of all downloads on the platform.

• The top downloaded game of Q1 2022 is a Garena Free Fire. Three top games by revenue are Genshin Impact, Honor of Kings, and CrossFire.

Source

Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games of February 2022

• The first place belongs to Honor of Kings which generated $225M of revenue. 95.2% of this sum came from Chinese players.

• PUBG Mobile with $205.2M of revenue is second. 64.2% belongs to China, 7.7% - to the US.

• Players worldwide spent on mobile games in February $6.6B. It’s 7.6% lower than a year before.

• The majority of the revenue came from the US market ($1.9B - 28.6% of the overall amount), Japan (18.8%), and China (17%) are next. But Sensor Tower is not tracking Chinese alternative Android stores and you should keep them in mind as Google Play is not available in the country.

Source

Newzoo: Gaming Peripheral Market Research

• The number of active PC/Console players increased from 2019 (152.4M) by 11% - to 179M players in 2021.

• About 3/4 of PC gamers have gamepads. Coronavirus hasn’t affected this trend anyhow.

• But if we’re talking about owning gaming mouses, keyboards, and surfaces, demand increased sufficiently. On average, by 15-20%. Newzoo also connects it with a transition to remote work.

• The majority of players (33%) buy peripherals to feel the game better. 21% want to get a competitive advantage. 17% of players just like how gaming peripherals look.

Source