Quick Recap for 2023 plus Top Games and Publishers, January 2024
Let’s review the data for 2023 and the top players of the first month of 2024.
Two events have profoundly impacted the mobile game industry, and the post-effects of those two events remain.
COVID-19 and IDFA.
COVID-19 led to an increase in the total time spent on mobile phones. During quarantine, with the power of the advertising industry, hypercasual games successfully converted all users into players. After quarantine, people started to breathe again and with fresh air, they realized their desire to play better games and spend less time with their mobile phones.
IDFA reaped the revenue streams of the hypercasual business model. Fuzzy UA campaigns didn’t work in the new order, the publishers couldn’t hook the users with their ads to play their super duper easy games. Therefore, many hypercasual studios and publishers tried to find better ways to generate revenue.
In a nutshell, mobile users have become more picky than before for mobile games.
In the data.ai report, we can see the details of this pickiness.
Consumer spending in mobile gaming decreased by 2% in 2023, reaching $107.3 billion, with downloads dipping to approximately 88 billion
Source: data.ai
Worldwide mobile game consumer spending reached its peak in 2021. However, in the subsequent years, the market saw no growth. While the download numbers for the mobile game market were at their highest in 2022, they decreased by 2% last year.
The dominant share of downloads in the gaming industry is driven by hypercasual games (STILL). This genre has experienced a surge in demand, and as the market intensifies, we anticipate a further evolution of hypercasual games, blending mechanics to enhance engagement.
Many publishers have successfully utilized hypercasual games as a user acquisition funnel. Now, the focus is expected to shift partially towards enhancing depth and engagement, given the substantial footprint they have acquired. With these changes, hypercasual games have started to transition into more casual games, giving rise to a new genre — hybrid casual games :)
Year-over-year (YoY) in-app purchase (IAP) spending on hypercasual games has seen a significant increase of +52.9%.
The YoY growth of Kids, Puzzle, and Match-3 Games has been consistently positive. If you lead a studio, you might want to consider focusing on these genres.
The report of Data.ai is very detailed, we will continue to analyze and bring more insights to you. Let’s jump into the details of the first month of this year.
Top Games and Publishers of January 2024
As the first month of 2024 concludes, some games continue to maintain their hype from 2023, and maybe even 2013, lol. Now, let’s see the winners of the first month of 2024 as we have listed them.
By Download
- One of the most striking games on our lists was ‘Help Me: Tricky Story.’ Released at the end of 2023, the game quickly became the most downloaded game on the Play Store in the first month of 2024. Despite its comments and scores on the Play Store, it downloaded over 16 million times in its debut month and took the top spot on the download charts.
- Subway Surfers, which has been on the market since 2013, still finds a place on the lists and continues to be played by every generation.
- Dream Games’ hit Royal Match, which came to the fore by surpassing Candy Crush in DAU, seems to widen the gap even more in 2024.
By In-App Purchase Revenue
- 4 of the 5 games that generate the most IAP revenue on the App Store are games published by Shenzhen Tencent. Even the games they release only for the Chinese market are on global lists.
Top Publishers
- Shenzhen Tencent cannot enter the top 10 in download numbers, it is almost unrivaled in IAP revenues. They generated more than 3 times the revenue of its closest competitor, Scopely, and closed the first month of 2024 with $453 million in IAP revenue.
- Azur Games, which has many hit games, is the publisher with the most downloads in the first month of 2024.
Before leaving our post, please share your thoughts on the mobile game market. We’re curious about which game genre you think will be the winner this year.
Co-Author: Metehan Cimci
