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Data.ai – the renamed App Annie – has released its Q3 2022 Games Index, which reveals the state of the mobile games market.
During the quarter, gamers spent $1.54 billion per week and downloaded more than 1.1 billion games on mobile. While both numbers are lower year-on-year, spending was still up 25% compared to pre-pandemic levels.
With this spending level, Data.ai is confident that gaming revenues are on track to reach $222 billion by 2022. Data.ai predicts that 60% of this revenue comes from mobile. With Data.ai’s previous specialization in mobile, it might not be surprising to learn that the platform is expected to account for a larger share of revenue compared to other research firms.
Data.ai’s Q3 2022 Games Index also claims that gaming is bigger on Android than on iOS. When it comes to downloads, nearly half of Google Play’s 30 billion installs were games. By comparison, only a quarter of iOS’s 8.7 billion downloads were games. This means that for every game downloaded on iOS, about seven were downloaded on Android.
When it comes to income, things are a little more complicated. 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 revenue, iOS is driving more mobile spending overall.
This discrepancy is likely due to price differences in devices and where consumers are located. According to Data.ai, Google Play is more popular in emerging markets such as India and Brazil, while iOS is more prominent in the US and China.
In its annual report, Data.ai points to premium mobile games like Genshin Impact as the reason for the platform’s growth. The Q3 2022 Games Index supports this. Premium products – such as Honor of Kings, the aforementioned Genshin Impact, ROBLOX and most notably Diablo Immortal – dominate mobile game spending. Blizzard’s mobile title was controversial among fans for the way it implemented microtransactions, but that didn’t stop the title from becoming one of the top 10 most profitable titles of the quarter.
The trend from Monthly Active Users (MAUs) to esports and sandbox titles. Free Fire, PUBG Mobile and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang have all made the difference alongside ROBLOX and Minecraft Pocket Edition.
Only two titles made it to all three lists in Data.ai’s Q3 2022 report: Candy Crush Saga and ROBLOX.
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