A new report says the majority of mobile game genres saw a decline in the first six months of 2022.
Not only that, mobile game downloads in the first half of 2022 also showed a clear decline, with the total mobile game market decreasing by 9.6% compared to the same period last year. This has attracted the attention of people in the gaming business.
According to new data from SensorTower Game Intelligence, the mobile games market fell to $11.4 billion in the first half of 2022. Arcade and tablet games were the only categories with increased revenue.
Arcade game revenue grew 14.8% year-over-year to about $176 million. Other genres from casual to RPG all dropped.
Racing games fell the most, with revenue down 28.8 percent year-over-year, and geo-enhanced reality games down 26 percent over the same period. Besides the drop in revenue, mobile game downloads also fell 2.5% year-over-year to 2.4 billion.
Revenue for the second quarter of 2022 alone fell 11.4% to $5.6 billion, although downloads were relatively flat at 1.2 billion. The report attributes the overall decline in the mobile game market to a variety of challenges and difficulties, including inflation, the end of the Covid-19 lockdown, and privacy changes such as the discontinuation of mobile games. use IDFA cards.
The decline in revenue and mobile game downloads has been predicted. With the current decrease, it is still not alarming. Experts say that it is necessary to monitor developments in the last 6 months of the year to have a more detailed and overview view of the mobile game market.
The video games category saw the fastest growth, with player spending growing 14.8% year-over-year. This equates to about $176 million. Gigantic’s Clawee takes the top spot in terms of player spending, with the game earning around US$16.5 million in the first half of 2022.
Meanwhile, the board game category grew by about 1% year-on-year, reaching nearly $388.8 million in revenue.
Besides the decrease in market size, the human resources scene in the gaming industry is also gloomy when many companies are said to have laid off employees for restructuring. Niantic had to cancel four projects in development including a previously announced transformers game and a partnership with Punchdrunk.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier has revealed that Blizzard and NetEase recently canceled a mobile MMORPG World of Warcraft Mobile without prior notice.