Monthly Mobile Game Industry Report: February 2022

Key insights

7 takeaways

01
U.S. consumer spending on money and treasure-themed mobile games was the highest-grossing game theme in the U.S. in 2021, at $4.4 billion.See it on page 4
02
The Animal-Insect theme had the fastest revenue growth of all themes in the U.S., with player spending of $26.5 million in 2021, up nearly 10x year-over-year.See it on page 4
03
The global mobile games market generated an estimated $7.4 billion in player spending in January 2022, a 7% year-over-year decline, with the U.S. accounting for 28% of revenues.See it on page 6
04
In a survey of more than 2700 developers cited from Statista, 70% said they did not intend to use NFTs in their games.See it on page 7
05
In a survey, 72% of developers said they would not use any cryptocurrency in their games, and under 1% had created cryptoeconomics in their game.See it on page 8
06
The hyper-casual market grew 13.5% in Q4 2021 compared with the third quarter, and Race Master 3D was the most downloaded game of that quarter with 47 million downloads.See it on page 10
07
According to Sensor Tower research cited in the report, half of the games that make the most money use the Season Pass system.See it on page 11

Summary

The document is a February 2022 monthly mobile game industry report compiled from several industry data sources, covering consumer spending, global revenue, developer attitudes toward crypto and NFTs, company revenues, downloads and monetization. It draws on Sensor Tower, AppMagic, Newzoo, SafeBettingSites and Statista data. U.S. consumers spent the most on money and treasure-themed mobile games, which had $4.4 billion in revenue in 2021. The Animal-Insect theme had the fastest growth, with player spending of $26.5 million in 2021 in the U.S., up nearly 10x year-over-year. The global mobile games market generated an estimated $7.4 billion in player spending on the App Store and Google Play in January 2022, a 7% year-over-year decline. The U.S. accounted for 28% of that total, with Japan at 19.3% and China at 17.8%. In a survey of more than 2700 developers cited from Statista, 70% said they did not intend to use NFTs in their games. The hyper-casual market grew 13.5% in Q4 2021 compared with the prior quarter, and Race Master 3D was the most downloaded game of that quarter with 47 million downloads. Sensor Tower data cited in the report found that half of the highest-earning games use the Season Pass system.