There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through every week.
So every Wednesday we’re here to break it all down into digestible chunks: data drop has just the numbers you need to know about, minus the fluff.
The Vampire Survivors-inspired shooter has now earned developer Habby over $250m in IAP, according to Appmagic data. It’ll have earned plenty more on top of that $250m through in-game ads, too.
As you can see from this IAP graph, though, the huge earnings generated in mid-late 2022 have been hard to maintain.
GameRefinery’s midcore games report
Based on US data taken from May 2022-2023, Gamerefinery’s latest report defines midcore games as shooters, strategy games or RPGs.
The top ten iOS midcore games in the US during Q1 2023 are below – the percentages are market share by revenue:
Midcore games account for around 35% of mobile gaming revenue on iOS in the US, says Gamerefinery. Seven out of the top ten are strategy games, with COD and PUBG the only shooters and Genshin Impact the only RPG.
This breakdown of CPI overall and by platform shows just how expensive UA is on iOS:
The average midcore game’s CPI of around $2 is about twice the CPI for casual games (around $1). According to this data Android users cost 5x less to acquire than iOS users.
[UPDATE: some mobilegamer.biz readers have questioned the above datapoint so we asked Gamerefinery to clarify. It said: “CPIs for midcore games can vary widely depending on the game in question and can range from <$1 to over $30. The $2 figure comes from an average of CPIs of midcore gaming apps across genres, regions and over 12 months. Taken as a target CPI, it would be aggressive and skew low. But the figure is intended to be an average, and not a target CPI for any specific game.”]
Then there’s a similar by-platform look at D7 ROAS:
Average D7 ROAS on Android is nearly 2x as much as iOS. Gamerefinery says D7 ROAS for casual games averages around 7% across platforms – while midcore’s average D7 ROAS is lower at 4.3%, engaged players are perhaps better judged by LTV.
Next, CPI by region:
Huge differences between markets here – North America’s CPI of $5.45 is more than 4x that of APAC. EMEA is third and LATAM is cheapest, where installs tend to be lower across verticals.
The below D7 ROAS by region graph shows us that while CPI in North America is high, it also yields the best D7 ROAS at 4.5%:
EMEA offers the best UA deal for midcore games with a relatively high D7 ROAS at 4.4% and the second-lowest CPI at $0.80. And while LATAM has low acquisition costs, it also has lower D7 returns at 1.5%.
CPI by genre:
Shooter players cost over twice as much as strategy players to acquire. RPG is the most cost-effective genre at $0.60.
D7 ROAS by genre:
Although RPG games have lower CPIs, they also post substantially lower D7 returns at around 1.7%. Compared to casual gaming genres, midcore genres have a lower average D7 ROAS overall but often retain for longer.
Mythical Games’ NFL Rivals hits 1m downloads
This NFT-powered sports game passed a million downloads across iOS and Android this week, according to this CoinDesk report. The game was released on April 26.
MAG Interactive’s Q3 financials
There’s a good snapshot below of MAG’s business, which appears to be growing steadily, through in his accompanying remarks CEO Daniel Hasselberg acknowledged “a period of continuously decreasing UA opportunities” in recent times.
“We have seen positive signals in the market in the early part of Q4 with increased investments in UA compared to the end of Q3,” he continued. “This is encouraging for the future prospects of our biggest growth game Wordzee. We are decreasing the targeted payback time for UA slightly in Q4 compared to the earlier quarters of the year.”
Dragon Quest Champions hits big in Japan
We noticed that this one is doing well following its release on June 13: in just two weeks Dragon Quest Champions has earned Square Enix over $8m from the Japanese market alone, according to Appmagic data.
Like Dragon Quest Walk, it might be a local phenomenon, but unlike that game Dragon Quest Champions (ドラゴンクエスト チャンピオンズ in Japanese) is a more familiar action-RPG type game, so could translate to the west if localisation is handled well.
Moengage, Apptweak and Appsflyer’s combined findings on the Indian mobile games market suggest that the player base now exceeds that of the US. The vast majority of the revenue is from ads, and the three most popular mobile game categories in India are hypercasual, social casino and casual.
While hypercasual and social casino continue to grow, casual is in pretty dramatic decline when you look at in-game ad revenue (above).
Supergaming’s new battle royale gathers pace
Indian games giant Supergaming told us this week that its forthcoming Indus Battle Royale game has now passed 3m pre-registrations. No word on a global release just yet, though.
Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat has now amassed 666,666 pre-registrations (ha!) since it was re-revealed a couple of weeks ago, according to this tweet from Capcom.
The game should be launching worldwide by the end of the year.
