Mobile game revenue topped $41.2 billion, while game downloads rose slightly by 0.4%.
Specifically, mobile game revenue fell to $41.2 billion in the first half of 2022 SensorTower. That was a decrease of 6.6% year-on-year, down from $44.1 billion. Both the App Store and Google Play Store dropped.
SensorTower analyst Craig Chapple said that the downturn was “very unusual and shows that there are significant challenges affecting the mobile gaming sector”.
“The problem could be a combination of factors like IDFA no longer being offered on the App Store, inflation, and the global cost of living crisis,” he said.
Mobile game revenue declines.
Chapple also said that, similar to the console and PC game markets, the mobile games sector is experiencing a significant increase in player spending that occurred during the initial wave of COVID-19 lockdowns. That can make comparisons almost unfair, especially when considering pre-COVID revenue.
Global player spending on the App Store and Google Play fell 6.6% year-on-year in 2022, but increased 36.7% compared to the first half of 2019. While these numbers are still unusual, Chapple thinks the reality is still dealing with the effects of the past two years.
The revenue charts remain the same with Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile holding the first and second places in terms of overall revenue for the first half of 2022. Genshin Impact comes in at third, keeping the momentum up against revenue milestone rate is approximately $1 billion.
Lineage W occupies the top of the CH Play table.
Lineage W takes the top spot on the Google Play store in the absence of both Tencent and NetEase mobile giants. Lineage is a blockbuster IP in Korea. Every time a new game is released on mobile devices from the beginning the game is already a “hit”. The most successful game in the franchise is Lineage M which has reached $3.9 billion in sales on both the App Store and Google Play Store.
Although player spending fell in the first half of the year, there was a small increase in global mobile game downloads, up 0.4 percent year-on-year to 28.1 billion downloads. . SensorTower reports that this growth has mainly come from the Google Play Store, up 1.3% with 23.9 billion downloads, while the App Store is down 4.5% at 4.2 billion downloads.
Although Honor of Kings holds the top spot in terms of mobile revenue, Subway Surfers became the most downloaded mobile game in the first half of the year. Subway Surfers is a hugely popular game for many years, generating millions of downloads every month, backed by regular content updates to attract players as well as attract new users. In May, the game hit about 30 million cumulative downloads on its 10th anniversary, which also fueled a record month of sales of $5.8 million.