There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through in the mobile games business. Our weekly data digest column breaks it all down into digestible chunks.
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Hybridcasual revenue up to $1.4bn in 2023
Sensor Tower reports that the number of new hybridcasual titles to release in 2023 clocked in at 136, an increase of almost 40% year-on-year. Revenue from the genre rose to $1.4bn last year, though downloads remain at around 5m.
Survivor.io was once again the biggest revenue generator for the year, bringing in $182m, while second place went to Miniclip’s Triple Match 3D with its $138m in revenue, rising seven places year-on-year.
Race Master 3D was the most downloaded title in the sector during 2023, hitting 112.3m downloads. It came in ahead of 2022’s top dog, Stumble Guys, which was downloaded over 100m times.
65% of hypercasual ad spend is on Android
Data from Tenjin shows that Android is still leading the hypercasual space. Google’s platform is behind 65% of ad spend, compared to 35% on iOS. The average cost-per-install (CPI) on Apple devices is 378% higher than on Android; $0.67 compared to $0.14.
The USA was behind the biggest ad share on both Android and iOS, but it is also the most expensive country when it comes to CPI. On Android, this is $0.59, while on iOS it is $0.85.
Huuuge hits record profit despite revenue dropping 11%
Games giant Huuuge has reported $283m in revenue for 2023, an 11% drop year-on-year. Despite this, the company has reported a record-breaking adjusted EBITDA of $108.2m, a massive 31.5% increase year-on-year. ARPPU in its core franchises hit $49.1m, a 12.9% increase, while DAU dropped 29.6% to 429,700.
Mobile DAUs up 4.1%, multiplayer means 40% more MAU
Engine giant Unity has released its latest monster Annual Report, which says that mobile gaming’s daily active users rose 4.1% in 2023.
That being said, there has been a slight decline in retention rates over the course of the year. Unity reports that this has decreased by 1% on D1 and by 0.1% on D7 year-on-year.
Unity’s research also shows that mobile gamers want multiplayer features in their titles. On average, titles with these features boast 40.2% more monthly active users.
37% of Asian gamers are women
New research from Niko Partners has shown that around 37% of Asian gamers are women. The number of females playing games grew by 11% year-on-year, that’s roughly double the growth rate for men.
In Southeast Asia, the portion of female gamers stands at 53%, while the Philippines stands head and shoulders above the rest with 63% of the country’s games audience being women.
Mobile is the platform of choice for these gamers too; 97% of women gamers in Asia play on their smartphone.
Players in Thailand and Philippines are top relative spenders in SEA
Sticking with Niko Partners for a second, the company’s director of research and insights, Daniel Ahmad, shared on Twitter that players in Thailand and Philippines spent the highest proportion of their income on video games out of Southeast Asian countries. Singapore, however, is the dominant force in the region in terms of per-person spending.
Mobile leads in live service
A new survey from Omdia shows that 56% of live service games in development were targeting a release on a mobile platform. 59% of them were intended to be cross-platform, while 18% are planning on coming to mobile, PC and console.
36% of developers said that the biggest challenge they were facing in making games right now was keeping the costs of development down. In fact, 80% of developers say they have seen their costs increase in recent years.
Meanwhile, 39% said their most significant issue was with implementing generative AI in game development, while 34% said that security was their biggest problem.
Only 2.9% of players sign up to a subscription trial
Games are lagging behind apps when it comes to subscriptions. That’s according to data from RevenueCat, which shows that only 2.9% of consumers who download a games app will start a trial on it. That’s compared to the 6.7% and 6.9% found in the leading Health and Fitness and Business categories.
Meanwhile, when it comes to converting trials to subscribers, gaming once again underperforms compared to apps, with only 30.8% of consumers moving from a free demo to paid. The company reckons that this reflects “more casual engagement”.
LatAm was the only region to grow in 2023
Research from AppLovin shows that Latin America was the only region to see growth in mobile last year. The firm’s report for 2023 shows that installs were up 7% year-on-year, while sessions increased just 1%. Globally, installs dropped 2%, while sessions fell by 7%.
In 2023, mobile was behind over half of all games revenue globally. Consumer spending dropped 2% overall, but removing China from the equation shows revenue rising by 4%. AppLovin predicts that mobile games revenue will rise by 4% in 2024 to hit $111.4bn.
