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%.
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Gaming companies spent $14.5B in 2021 for users acquisition. This number doesn’t include China.
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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.
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84% of gaming apps are using SKAdNetwork now.
App Annie: Indian Gaming Market in 2021
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Users downloaded 26.7B apps and spent $417M on them in 2021.
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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.
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The mobile Indian market in 2021 fell down by $4M.
Ampere Analysis: The Console Gaming Market reached $60B in 2021
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By the end of this year, it will reach $61.1B.
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Growth is driven by new consoles sales & subscription services.
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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%.
AppMagic: Top Mobile Games by Revenue and Downloads in February 2022
Revenue:
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Honor of Kings is the leader by overall revenue with $168M.
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First place on Android belongs to Lineage W, which earned on this platform $61M.
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Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle is back to top-10, players spent $61.7M across all platforms in the game in February.
Downloads:
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First place, the second month in a row, taken by Garena Free Fire. It was downloaded 22.5M times.
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Merge Master — Dinosaur Fusion with 22M of downloads is in second place.
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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.
There are 44,000 developers in Steam - who are they?
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75% of them have developed only 1 game. 443 (1%) - more than 10. And only 4 developers released more than 100 games.
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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.
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51% of developers are working on Action titles. 5% are working on Sports games.
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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.
Sensor Tower: Monetisation in 2021
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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.
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The majority of projects utilizing NFT or Blockchain are mid-core.
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Half of the top-10 games with gacha are based on popular IPs.
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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.
Omdia: Cloud Gaming Market Grew by 3 times in 2021
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In 2021 cloud gaming earned $3.7B.
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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.
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Xbox Game Pass Ultimate has 16.4M subscribers, PlayStation Now - about 4.4M.
Steam: 2021 in numbers
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Platform revenue increased by 27% compared to 2020.
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Average MAU - 132M (12M more than in 2020), DAU - 69M.
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31.2M new buyers joined Steam in 2021.
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The peak number of users in 2021 is 27.4M. This is the all-time record as well.
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The number of VR games users increased by 11%.
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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.
Apptica: Released Games in winter 2021-2022 on iOS report
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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.
NonFungible & L’Atelier BNP Paribas: Blockchain & NFT 2021 Report
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NFT Games revenue in 2021 was $5.17B.
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Axie Infinity was responsible for more than half of this sum - $3.5B. NBA Top Shot with $827M of revenue is next.
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Metaverses with blockchain elements earned $513.8M.
- Blockchain & NFT industry overall earned about $17.6B. It’s 200 times more than in 2020.
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The number of NFT buyers increased from 75k in 2020 to 2.3M in 2021.
Tapjoy: 50% of gamers prefer games with ad monetization
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In 2021, the number of gamers that prefer watching ads over buying something in games, increased by 138%.
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On average, mobile gamers are spending 10 hours per week on games.
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About half of respondents (49%) are playing mobile games multiple times per day.
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Puzzles are the most popular genre among all age groups.
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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.
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Rewarded Video is the most appreciated format (53% of people like it).
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39% of users are not willing to share their personal data in any case.
NPD Group: US Gaming Market Revenue fell by 6% in February 2022
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February gaming market revenue resulted in $4.4B.
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Users’ spending on hardware went down by 27%, compared to 2020. The revenue was $295M.
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Nintendo Switch took first place both in terms of revenue and the number of consoles sold. Xbox Series is second.
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Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus are top-sellers in February.
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Revenue from accessories declined by 7% to $180M, compared to 2020. The best-selling accessory became Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller.
UKIE: British Game Industry Overview
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There are about 24 thousand employees working in the gaming industry in the UK.
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90% of employees are white people. 67% are men. 61% are under 35.
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52% of employees prefer hybrid or remote formats of work.
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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.
Global Industry Analysts: By 2026 the Gaming Mobile Market will reach $140B
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By the end of this year, its volume will be $94.8B.
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The US will be responsible for about $20.3B of this amount.
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The main drivers mentioned are increasing consumption of high-end smartphones and market growth leading by already large (China), and evolving markets (India, Mexico).
SELL: French Gaming Market grew by 13.5% since 2019
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Its current valuation is €5.6B.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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82% of all game sales were digital.
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Accessories sales for PC & Consoles increased by 11% to €840M.
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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).
Unity: Unity-based games revenue increased by 30% in 2021
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The number of games made on Unity in 2021 increased by 93%. The number of Unity developers increased by 31%.
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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.
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The majority of game developers are focused on a single project. However, those who operate several projects are earning more.
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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%).
Belgian Games: Belgian Gaming Market reached €600M in 2021
- After the record 2020, it grew by an additional 4% in 2021.
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Interesting that the share of digital games sales in Belgium is just about 42%. 58% of people are still preferring to buy physical copies.
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147M games were downloaded on iOS and Android in 2021.
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The top hardware sold in Belgium in 2021 was Nintendo. PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch Lite are next.
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The top games by sales in 2021 are FIFA 22, Grand Theft Auto V, and FIFA 21.
data.ai: Mobile Games earned $22B in Q1 2022
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It’s 73% of Google Play and 60% of iOS overall revenue during the period.
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Quarter revenue of mobile games increased by 42% compared to Q1 2020.
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The US, China, and Japan are the largest markets. The highest growth dynamic showed APAC region with 10% rise QoQ.
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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.
Sensor Tower: Top Grossing Mobile Games of February 2022
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The first place belongs to Honor of Kings which generated $225M of revenue. 95.2% of this sum came from Chinese players.
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PUBG Mobile with $205.2M of revenue is second. 64.2% belongs to China, 7.7% - to the US.
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Players worldwide spent on mobile games in February $6.6B. It’s 7.6% lower than a year before.
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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.
Newzoo: Gaming Peripheral Market Research
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The number of active PC/Console players increased from 2019 (152.4M) by 11% - to 179M players in 2021.
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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.
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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.
