SensorTower released data for the first half of 2022, the US mobile game market fell 9.6% year-on-year to $11.4 billion.
SensorTower uses the ability to categorize games into relevant major genres and sub-genres to effectively identify key trends. The company analyzed 14 major game genres in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.
Revenues and downloads for each mobile game category on the App Store and Google Play store give a clearer picture of how the market is facing the global cost of living crisis, inflation, difficulties of IDFA.
Arcade was the fastest-growing genre, with player spending growing 14.8% year-over-year to around $176 million. The arcade subgenre with the most players spending is hands-free games, which grossed nearly $88 million, up 35.3% year-over-year.
The #1 arcade game by revenue is Gigantic’s Clawwee, which generated $16.5 million in the first half of the year. This is followed by AppQuantum Publishing’s Gold and Goblins at 2nd and Century Games’ Entertainment Mafia at 3rd.
The second-fastest revenue-growing category was board games, which grew about 1% year-over-year to nearly $388.8 million. All other mobile game genres saw declines in total player spending in the first half of the year, with racing games dropping the most at 28.8%. Puzzle games were the biggest spenders in the first half of 2012, reaching $2.3 billion, down 8.8% year-on-year. This was followed by card games, which generated $2.2 billion, and strategy games, with $2 billion in revenue.
From the second quarter of 2022 alone, mind games remained the fastest growing revenue category, with player spending growing about 18% year-over-year to $89.4 million. Meanwhile, hypercasual games ranked second, with player spend increasing 2.3% to $27.3 million. All other genres fell with racing games down 38% in revenue.
Compared to the same period in 2021, the action game with the fastest increase in downloads in the first half of this year, increased by 5.4% year-on-year to 54.7 million. The most downloaded action game was Action Sandbox, whose downloads increased 2.3% year-over-year to 15.7 million installs. The most downloaded game was miHoYo’s Genshin Impact with 2.3 million cumulative downloads, followed by Rocket Go Global’s Galaxy Attack: Space Shooter in second.
Sports games are the only genre that hasn’t dropped in downloads. Simulation games had the slowest decline, down 1.8 percent year-on-year to approximately 168 million plays. In the first half of 2012, the hypercasual game topped with the most downloads, generating 718.2 million installs.