App Annie: Six facts about the mobile gaming industry for the year

The other day, App Annie pleased with a retrospective report on the mobile market for 2017. A separate chapter in the report is devoted to games. We have highlighted the most important of it.

Fact #1: User spending on mobile games continues to grow

People are spending more and more on entertainment. From year to year. It does not matter whether we are talking about the top consumer spending countries or not.

Get ready for the fact that this year the market leaders will earn even more. And their cost will jump to even more astronomical values.

The same Big Fish was recently bought for almost $1 billion. But, attention, he is not even in the top ten in terms of income. What price tags can the leaders have at the same time?

Fact #2: 68% of the time spent by players in mobile phones falls on those who are over 25 years old

Young people don’t spend too much time in mobile games compared to those who are older. Moreover, in the USA, the audience “from 45 years old” accounts for 37% of all playing time.

This information clearly demonstrates who exactly it is worth focusing on when developing. Children and teenagers are definitely not an option.

Fact #3: the highest–grossing mobile brand by the end of 2017 is Lineage

In the top ten highest-grossing mobile games of the year were two games created by the same franchise. It’s about Lineage 2 Revolution from Netmarble and Lineage M from NCSOFT. Both are MMOs. Both are made in South Korea. Both earned most of the cash register there.

Of all the ten projects in the box office chart, only three were created using Western IP.

Fact #4: China’s expansion into the world market is successful, foreign users are increasingly spending money on games from China

Over the past two years, foreign users’ spending on Chinese games has increased by 130% to $3.5 billion. This is with the total volume of the entire application market at $86 billion.

High competition in the domestic Chinese market is one of the drivers of such developments. That’s what App Annie thinks. Companies like Tencent and NetEase have taken over the entire local market. Small and medium-sized companies have no choice but to enter foreign markets.

Fact #5: Honor of Kings and Anipop have the biggest MAU in the world

The two leaders in monthly audience are very different from each other. Honor of Kings is a MOBA from Tencent. Anipop – three-in-a-row from the Japanese Happy Elements.

To be fair: there are very few similar titles in the top at all. There was a place for runner, billiards, and even poker.

Fact #6: Playrix entered the Top 10 most earning gaming companies in the world by the end of 2017

Playrix did not become the opening of 2017. The company’s business went uphill much earlier. But it was last year that the company began to earn on an equal footing with world leaders. This has never happened before with teams based in Russia.

The full version of the report can be downloaded on the official App Annie website. There are 162 slides. There is something to read.

Source: App Annie