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.
Read on for the numbers you need to know about minus the fluff.
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Mobile gaming hit $107bn in 2023
Data.ai says consumer spending and downloads both saw 2% declines year-on-year in its big 2023 trends report.
Much of this downturn appears to be down to China; discount that market and downloads were up 1%, while consumer spending rose by 4%.
The US is still the dominant force with the largest consumer spending on both the Google Play and App Store: US consumers spent $24bn on mobile games or 23% of the global total.
The US also saw the largest downloads on iOS, while India was top on Android. iOS makes up just 14% of downloads overall, while the other 86%, of course, are on Android.
Advertising for 2023 clocked in $362bn for the year – a 7.5% increase – with Data.ai predicting that it’ll soar to over $400bn in 2024, an 11% rise.
While the ad sector is still on the rise, that growth will be lower than what we saw between 2019 and 2022. Mobile advertising spend was behind 77% of the sector’s revenue for the year, or three times larger than the $107.3bn spent on app stores.
For the first time, Dream Games’ Royal Match and Gardenscapes from Playrix both made over $1bn in consumer spending during 2023, joining the likes of Candy Crush, Pokémon Go and Honor of Kings in the $1bn club.
Roblox makes record $741m developer payout
Games platform Roblox paid out $740.8m to creators in 2023, according to a regulatory filing spotted by Bloomberg. It’s a record sum, and an increase of 19% year-on-year.
Over 12,000 creators cashed in their Robux currency; over 3,500 made $10,000 for the year, while 750 walked away with $100,000. On average, developers would have made around $61,700 for the year.
Unity stock tumbles as earnings and outlook disappoints
Unity reported a 57% increase in its revenue in 2023. The company brought in $2.1bn during the fiscal year, while revenue was up 35% to hit $609m for Q4.
Shareholders appear to be less than impressed, however, as Unity’s share price plummeted 15% in after-hours trading. At the time of writing, it is rebounding, but around 6% below where it was before the company announced its financials.
For the fourth quarter, Unity reports adjusted EBITDA of $186m, though the company says this is inflated by $102m due to the licensing agreement it had with Weta FX. Without this, adjusted EBITDA clocks in at $84m.
The ongoing restructuring at Unity has resulted in 25% of its workforce being let go, too.
Unity continues to be a dominating force in the mobile games space, apparently powering around 69% of the “top 1,000 mobile games”.
Casual gaming trends from 2023
Appmagic’s in-depth casual game trends report takes in all of 2023’s numbers and ranks the different casual game subgenres by category:
‘Merge-2 with Orders’ games like Merge Mansion, Merge Manor: Sunny House are a growing niche, but games are really having to fight for new users, says Appmagic. It’s high risk, high reward with most titles only seeing success at least a year after launch. Devs need to keep an eye on updates and events to engage gamers.
The Match 3D genre (which includes Match Factory and Happy Match Café) boasts both a high success rate and lots of revenue growth. It’s not yet saturated, says Appmagic, meaning that new releases can appear in the top-grossing charts. It’s recommended developers introduce more complex gameplay to help this genre reach its full potential in terms of player engagement.
Meanwhile, the idle tycoon category, featuring games like Idle Basketball Arena Tycoon and Goblins Wood: Tycoon Idle, still has potential for return on investment, just not the biggest return. Improving LiveOps is the name of the game here for greater revenue.
For ‘match-3 with meta’ games like Royal Match and Gardenscapes, revenue is split evenly between a number of top titles. New games can break out by being different, though this is risky.
The majority of new ‘merge-3 with meta’ games like Alice’s Dream: Merge Island and Merge Topia are very different to the genre’s biggest names, though Appmagic believes there should be more experimentation. For titles already out in the wild, devs should try ‘misleading’ marketing to increase ROI.
EA cuts staff and axes MLB Tap Sports and F1 Mobile Racing
Gamesindustry.biz reports that EA’s mobile division is being trimmed with “a small number” of layoffs and the sunsetting of EA Sports MLB Tap Sports and F1 Mobile Racing.
EA bought the MLB Tap Sports series as part of its $2.1bn acquisition of Glu Mobile in 2021, and similarly snapped up F1 Mobile Racing when it bought Codemasters for $1.2bn, also in 2021.
Playtika posts flat financials, pledges M&A splurge
Israeli mobile giant Playtika posted flat financials for 2023.
The company reported revenue of $2.567bn for the year, a 1.9% decline year-on-year, though direct-to-consumer platform revenue increased by 5.25% to $639.4m. That’s 24% of total revenue for 2023.
For the full year, the company saw a slight increase in its credit-adjusted EBITDA, which clocked in at $832.2m for 2023, a 3.4% rise year-on-year.
For Q4 – the three months ending December 31st – alone, Playtika saw revenue increase 1.1% to $637.9m and direct-to-consumer revenue clock in a $161.6m, a 7.6% increase year-on-year and 25% of total revenue.
Playtika also reports that while the average daily number of players paying for its games and average daily active users have both seen declines year-on-year – 2.2% and 2.3% respectively – the amount of revenue being spent per player on average has actually increased by 2.6%.
Ludo King passes 1bn downloads on Android
Pocketgamer.biz reports that Mumbai developer Gametion’s Ludo King has been downloaded over one billion times on the Google Play Store to date. The title was initially released back in 2016 and has become the first Indian game to have hit this milestone.
