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Data.ai — the rebranded App Annie — has released its Q3 2022 Games index, revealing the state of the mobile games market.
Across the quarter, gamers spent $1.54 billion per week and downloaded over 1.1 billion games on mobile. While both of these figures are down year-on-year, spend still up 25% compared to pre-pandemic levels.
With this level of spending, Data.ai is confident that gaming revenue is on track to reach $222 billion in 2022. Data.ai predicts that 60% of this revenue will come from mobile. With Data.ai’s prior specialization in mobile, it is perhaps unsurprising to hear that the platform is expected to account for a higher share of revenue compared to other research firms.
Data.ai’s Q3 2022 Games index also claims that gaming is bigger on Android than iOS. When it comes to downloads, nearly half of Google Play’s 30 billion installs were games. In comparison, only a quarter of iOS’s 8.7B downloads were games. This means that for every game downloaded on iOS, about seven were downloaded on Android.
Things are a bit more complicated when it comes to revenue. About half of the $21 billion spent on iOS was for gaming. Meanwhile, about two-thirds of Google Play’s $11.4 billion in revenue came from games. While gaming accounts for a larger share of Android’s revenue, iOS accounts for more spend on mobile overall.
This discrepancy is likely due to price difference in devices and where consumers are located. According to Data.ai, Google Play is more popular in developing markets like India and Brazil while iOS is more prominent in the U.S. and China.
In its annual report, Data.ai points to premium mobile games such as Genshin Impact as a reason for the platform’s growth. The Q3 2022 Games Index backs this. Premium products — such as Honor of Kings, the aforementioned Genshin Impact, ROBLOX and notably Diablo Immortal — dominate mobile game spending. Blizzard’s mobile title was controversial among fans for how it implemented microtransactions but that did not stop the title from becoming one of the top 10 grossing titles of the quarter.
The Monthly Active Users (MAUs) trend towards esports and sandbox titles. Free Fire, PUBG Mobile, and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang all made the cut alongside ROBLOX and Minecraft Pocket Edition.
Only two titles managed to snag a spot on all three lists on Data.ai’s Q3 2022 report — Candy Crush Saga and ROBLOX.
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Jordan Fragen
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