SuperData: In January, players spent $9.4 billion on digital versions of games
SuperData has released a review of the digital gaming market for January. Sales last month totaled $9.4 billion. At the same time, only the mobile segment has grown.
Total digital sales of games increased by 3% year-on-year. And traditionally, only mobile games have positive dynamics. Their income grew by 13% year-on-year.
Console sales, on the contrary, have seriously sagged. Revenue of free-to-play games fell by 42%, paid — by 19%. The fall is justified by the fact that a number of hits were launched in January last year, including Kingdom Hearts III and the remake of Resident Evil 2. January 2020, as already noted in NPD, was not so rich in big releases.
SuperData also announced a decline in digital PC sales, but did not give any dynamics.
But analysts elaborated on several titles from different segments:
1) Playrix, founded in Russia, doubled the revenue of Gardenscapes — New Acres in five months. Now the game is in third place in the mobile charts with a record revenue of $ 111.9 million. In addition, Gardenscapes and Homescapes surpassed all Candy Crush Saga games from King combined in total revenue.
2) Digital sales of Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot reached 1.6 million copies. This figure is twice the sales of any other game in the series. Experts believe that the franchise owes the increase in audience to the change of genre. Kakarot is a single—player RPG, while its predecessors were multiplayer fighting games.
3) World of Warcraft has a decreased audience compared to August last year. That month, we recall, Blizzard released the classic WoW, which caused a lot of excitement. In January, 64% fewer players purchased a subscription to the title than in August. Although compared to December, the number of subscribers increased by 17% — this is probably due to the release of the Visions of N’Zoth add-on.
4) Not all “royal battles” are smooth. Fortnite has reached a two-year low in its revenue. Respawn‘s Apex Legends has decreased revenue compared to December, although its console MAU has grown by 12%. But PUBG has something to brag about: spending by PC players in it increased by a whopping 512% on a monthly basis. Revenue growth was affected by the launch of season 6 of Battle Royale in January.
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