There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through each 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.
Sensor Tower’s Q1 2023 data digest
The data firm’s latest batch of research is based on its own App Store and Google Play estimates from January 1-March 31 2023.
Sensor Tower recorded 35bn downloads from both stores combined in that time, down from 36bn year-on-year.
App Store downloads were up year-on-year from 8bn to 8.1bn, but Google Play downloads fell YoY from 28bn to 26.9bn.
Subway Surfers was the top game download worldwide for Q1 2023, though installs declined 8.5% YoY. It was followed by Roblox, Free Fire, Candy Crush and Ludo King, with Attack Hole cited as a notable new entrant. Homa’s hypercasual game finished on 36.9m downloads for the quarter.
Roblox was the top download for the quarter in the US and Europe, while Ludo King was top in Asia. Roblox was particularly strong in Russia, which accounted for 26% of all downloads in Europe. Arcade and puzzle games were cited as the dominant genres in Europe, too.
In Asia, Ludo King’s success is driven largely by India, which claimed 85% of total downloads for the period. Netease’s Eggy Party bagged fifth spot in Asia’s Q1 downloads with 24m installs, despite only being available in China.
In Sensor Tower’s top 20 publishers worldwide by downloads list Azur Interactive led the games specialists, followed by Supersonic, SayGames, Embracer, Miniclip, Outfit7, ABI Global, BabyBus, Voodoo, Tencent, AppLovin, Take-Two and Zego Studio.
India led the way by some distance in the top markets by downloads chart with 6.4bn downloads, though that is actually down YoY by 3.6%.
The top five markets all saw download decline YoY, but Turkey had the highest YoY growth among the top 10 countries at 5%. Installs in Turkey were up YoY from 1bn to 1.1bn.
There were further breakdowns by store:
App Store: the US and China remain the top markets by far, taking up 43% of all iOS downloads during the period. Mobile game downloads were down YoY by a huge 20%, said Sensor Tower, with Russia also seeing a YoY download drop of 8.6 across apps and games combined. Brazil, meanwhile, is up for downloads overall over 16% YoY, and could overtake Russia as the fifth largest market in the coming years.
Google Play: India saw a 5.5% YoY decline, but still exceeded 6bn downloads for the period. It was followed by Brazil (down 8.8% YoY), Indonesia (down 8.9%), US (down 3%) and Russia (down 3.1%).
Statty tidbits in a press release about Fingersoft’s new partnership with Bidstack: Boom Karts Multiplayer Racing has racked up 3.5m downloads since it launched in May 2022, and has generated almost half a billion in-game ad requests in the last year.
When should you show your ATT prompt?
Some ATT nuggets from GameRefinery, which looked at when the top 200 grossing US iOS games displayed their ATT permission prompt.
- 81.4% showed the pop-up within the first 30 seconds of gameplay
- In the top-grossing 50 games, 58% showed the pop-up 6-15 seconds into gameplay
- Using the pop-up in the first five seconds is a no-no
- Only 25.6% of the sampled games included a personalised pre-ATT prompt
- Games in the top 100 grossing list were 50% more likely to include a personalised pre-ATT prompt than games in top-grossing ranks 101-200
- Top 100 grossing games were 89% more likely to include additional prompts than games among ranks 101-200
Apple’s $1tn App Store breakdown
Apple said that the App Store ecosystem generated $1.1 trillion in total billings in 2022, and was careful to emphasise that over 90% of app developers don’t pay the tech giant a penny.
Apple had some app review stats to showcase, too – it said that it had blocked $2bn in fraudulent transactions in 2022, and rejected 1.7m app submissions for failing to meet privacy, security and quality standards.
The Rush Royale maker took to LinkedIn last week to post some stats about its business:
- It claims to have 1.1bn registered players
- Rush Royale hit $200m in lifetime earnings and has over 1m DAU
- War Robots hit $750m in lifetime earnings and has over 200m registered players
- Left to Survive has 60m registered players and passed $120m in lifetime revenue
- Hustle Castle has earned over $400m in its lifetime and has over 80m installs
2/3 staff gone at EA Firemonkeys, says report
Kotaku Australia reported that “up to two-thirds” of EA’s Firemonkeys team in Melbourne is being laid off as development shifts to EA’s Indian studios.
Having previously run Real Racing 3 and Need for Speed: No Limits, Firemonkeys will now focus solely on The Sims: FreePlay. The report also said that studio GM Joe Donoghue was part of the layoffs, and that Real Racing 4 was cancelled – for a second time – as part of the move.
Gamesforum’s UA manager survey
Events firm Gamesforum asked 100 UA experts what they feel their biggest challenges are right now.
Most said that the top issue was optimising creatives to get results, followed by understanding privacy and synchronising paid and organic marketing.
Pokémon Masters EX hits 50m installs, nears $200m revenue
Dena said that its critter battler hit 50m downloads last week, so we had a quick peek at Appmagic to check on the revenue side. It’s currently at around $192m lifetime, and has pulled in around 2.5-3m per month on average in the last six months.
