Session: Level Up - Gaming In 2025 & Beyond - Josh Skinner, Sensor Tower

Heat. [Music] Heat. So, up next, I would like to welcome a a great friend of ours, uh Josh from Sensor Tower, who's going to be talking uh about you're pretty much going to be talking about what's the Center Towers reports, aren't you? Pretty much. So, do you want to come over to the stage, Josh? So, we can give a round of applause for Josh, please. Oh, you've got a mic. That's all good. Yeah, that's fine. All good. I'll leave you to it.
Awesome. Um, hey everybody. Uh, my name's Josh, as Charlie said, um, from Sensar. Um, for those that don't, um,

know what Sensar is, what we do, um, we are a, um, competitive, um, intelligence platform, um, within the mobile app ecosystem, but also recently we've branched out into um, PC console data, too. Um and today really the plan is to take you guys through a bit of a state of gaming um including some general app trends um on kind of a high level. Um if anybody does ever have any questions feel free to of course ask towards the end. Um but also to um you know feel free to get in touch with me kind of after the the presentation. Um I think I'll probably be the only presentation this week at PGC Helsinki that maybe doesn't mention AI. Um, I think it's been mentioned in every single session I've been to, which is which is a great thing. But I'll try to avoid that word for uh for a little while. So, let's hop in. And really, the way that we're going to look at this report is kind of year-to- date 2025. Um, in terms of where we're at compar comparable to 2024. So, let's hop in.

In terms of the agenda that we're going to kind of run through, um, I think the first thing you guys may be looking at is how many slides is this guy going to present? Um please don't be scared by 23. Um we will run through this nice and smoothly on a nice high level but really we're going to start on the mobile industry level. Give you really a feel of which direction is the mobile industry taking um of year to date um into PC console and then also look into some live services um and our new kind of live ops trucking tool and start to understand some some strong use cases and success stories that we've seen from a mobile gaming perspective and then of course a nice conclusion and then we can all move on. So let's start with mobile as mentioned one thing format and error good start one thing that we can see is mobile um gaming downloads are down okay um revenue is flat but what we have seen is that mobile players are still playing the same time but in shorter sessions there's a couple of reasons that this conclusion could come um and I'll dig into that a little bit further um but

although we're kind of down on the download side it's only 6% over the same period but actually we do see some inapp purchase revenue on an increase of year-to- date. Non-gaming has actually nearly taken overtaken um gaming inapp purchases and we can see within the graph here this is the first time that non- gaming has um come close to overtaking um gaming inapp purchase revenue um which is very interesting to see and we but one thing we can see with the the second graph there on the far side is that gaming still holds the revenue against your typical typical categories of kind of software media entertainment and kind of outside of other. So although we do see non-gaming, you know, being caught up um by by the general app market, um we still see strength when we look on a category level. And there's probably a potentially a couple of reasons that inapp purchase revenue is is maybe being chased. This could be, of course, with DTOC coming into play. Um and we'll touch on that a little bit later.

This formatting is really playing with me. Um but one thing we have seen is that mobile has seen the inapp purchase growth year to date comparable to 2024 and we can see that inapp purchase revenue is actually up 10% across both stores which is great to see and gives us a positive outlook going forward and again even though DTOC is lingering um and stepping away from the typical inapp purchase revenue we're still seeing the increase on your traditional store revenue which I think overall from the gaming market um is a really positive outlook for 2025. and beyond. In the middle, we can see the total app revenue platform um by worldwide. And again, we can see strong um growth um you know, over 12 billion on on year to date based on 2024 into 2025. So, let's talk about um this on a on a geographical level. And one thing that

we've started to see is significant revenue growth. Um particularly within the Middle East. Um this is of course for a for a number of reasons, but typically the reason that we believe we've seen this is the growth within Saudi, not only the Saudi market, but also the growth that we see from from um the likes of Savvy and those within the market as well. But there's also positive growth that we see for Europe and Latin America as well from a download perspective. Downloads are up in these particular regions. And if we look at the regions that are being potentially affected, looking at North America and particularly Asia that are seeing a download decline and revenue decline that we see, this could be related to some macroeconomic factors such as um the dollar strength um against these particular regions. And when we look on a genre level away from a geo level, we can see that strategy really is winning 2025 year to date in terms of revenue. they're seeing huge revenue increase and download um increase. This could be down to a couple of titles being successful, but it's

important that um we really do highlight strategy who are really stepping away into their kind of own space from in there. And then if we look more towards the bottom leftand corner, we can see potentially the genres that are, you know, potentially not performing as well. racing and action and lifestyle games we see as a mark on a market level potentially taking the hit here across a genre level. When we look at a publisher level, it's important to note that Tencent just remains the top mobile gaming publisher that we see year to date. Um, but we start to see Sentry Games become a growing contender. Um it's important to note that we see First Fund as well with obviously Last War Survival increasing their app revenue by 92% um from year to date. Um and Century Games also growing around 55% year to date in 2025. So on a publisher level, of course, we still have the big players in this place

performing well, but we also have those that are starting to challenge this with individual titles. Last War Survival um again drove the most um mobile game revenue in in the first half of 2025, which is important to note. And Roblox is the game that has the most users in terms of when we're looking at monthly active users. There's also some other mentions that we see here and I'll I'll hop back into this on a on a PC console level, but some of EA Sports titles and with their mobile FC mobile soccer also stepping into the monthly active users year to date for the first time of that level across the top 10 that we have within here. Let's step away from mobile a little bit and jump onto PC console. Um, and just for context, Sensab provides PC console data and this is the source of data that you'll see today. PC console games have been downloaded 1.4 billion times so far this year. And we're looking at total downloads year to date within here. As you can see within the graph, Steam remains the largest

platform. Um, and these these downloads that we're or unit that we're including here includes both freetoplay and downloads um within here. So, it's important Steam is still leading the race. PlayStation, Xbox um is coming close and we'll dive into that a little bit further. One thing on Steam, um, they've seen, you know, great growth throughout the years and 2024 was a record year for Steam in terms of units sold. They are very close, if headwinds continue, to having another record year in 2025. This is down to a few factors you can see within the bottom. Um, so it is important to note. So consumer spend throughout this is increasing and increasing. um we project that they they could potentially overtake this, but this really does depend on their Q4 success um across the market. So overall, you know, PC console is looking like a very positive outlook from a consumer spend perspective.

If we break into the games that are actually driving this across PC console, of course, as I mentioned, EA Sports FC 25 is the top game by download so far within this year. Um, and with their most recent one just releasing um, four weeks ago, we'll start to see the growth from in there. But the interesting takeaway from this slide is that most best-selling games in 2025 are not AAA titles. Um, successful and those that have been successful this year from AAA perspective have all been installments of huge franchises. So, it's important to note when we're looking more from an indie um and kind of um an AM remastered um perspective, we can see the games in the middle here that are really starting to drive units sold and also revenue perspective and seeing success. So, it's not just AAA that are leading the race here. Again, from a publisher perspective, when we start to understand the PC console um market, we can see that EA is clearly the top publisher by 2025

year-to- date downloads. And this is hugely really to the success, as mentioned, from um EFC 25 um and other titles within there. But we also see other um publishers stepping into this chart for the first time in terms of 2025 year to date. So again, it's to highlight an exciting time for potential um publishers outside of your typical top publish publishers that we see within the PC console space. Breaking out into EA's kind of portfolio and what we're starting to look at. Of course, we're all well accustomed to EA Sports and um and really the performance that we see is driven from this is obviously um related to their kind of IP and franchises that we see here. We have mobile on the far side and PC console to the side. And again, the clear kind of release here is around their FC mobile title and linking into the FC25 here. But we can see a clear clear breakout and a nice portfolio that they have across both PC console and mobile that are driving success for them both from a

download perspective. Let's hop into live ops. Um I think this was the buzzword of a PGC probably two years ago. Um, but let's hop into this and I'm going to go through a bit of a use case here and analyze, you know, one title in particular, but also talk about live ops from a market perspective. When we talk about live ops, I think it's important to note, and I think everybody in this room knows this, but just doing live ops is no guarantee of growth. I think there was potentially um a, you know, an insinuation that people thought that if we do live ops, we're going to see growth. Um, I think what's important to note here is one thing that we have seen is 78% of the top 10,000 live ops games running on mobile by 2024, their revenue actually declined um for from half one of 2025 over 2024. So, that's important to note. And six of the top 1,000 games saw revenue declines of over 100 million um for 2025 into 2024.

And we can see the decline and also the revenue growth that we see from those games actively having live ops. And it's important to know that successful games have the right events. They're updating them regularly. They try new things. But also they're being data driven not by their own data sets but also competitive data sets from a live ops perspective to understand when they get it right or their competitors get it right and learn from their own strategy. And we'll talk about a game that we believe has grown because they had the right live op strategy in just a second. Just talk about um those games, you know, really focusing on live ops and in that purchase revenue growth. We see white out survival, last war survival, but the one I want to highlight is gossip harbor. This is a question that I get from customers quite often around like how are these guys so successful? What have they done? What can we learn? And the next slide will take us into that a little bit. Gossip Harour again really upped their game from a live ops perspective and we believe this is where we started to this

is why they started to see the strong growth within the market and their competitors of theirs started to take interest and understand why this is happening. For context this is just a very high level screenshot of some of the data that we provide around live ops. But one thing that we noticed they they recently introduced a new week-long um task event and this really took off for them and gave them great success within the market alongside other events which we'll touch upon. To get into the weeds a little bit um they released this new kind of 7-day task event. Um and this really took off for these guys. One thing we saw before was a 24-hour event. They had success. It didn't work as well as a 7-day event. So they e they pivoted to this 7-day event and they started to see huge revenue growth based on the data that we have and the data that we see from them. And this slide kind of pulls it to pieces is looking at Gossip Harbor revenue compared to Gossip Harour's number of events. Now some would say

well if I just do more events does this mean I just get more revenue? It absolutely doesn't mean that. What it does mean is you need to ensure that of course you have the correct live ops events that's successful and again you're learning from others. But this chart really shows two separate data sets of when they have increased their their events. We see that slow drive a revenue increase dating back from 2023 when live op events you know were below kind of 40 a week um pushing through to almost 75 that we see within here. And we can see that clear correlation between the two there. Cool. So, into a conclusion with a couple of minutes left. I know I've been pretty quick. PC console really does look healthy. I mentioned Steam. Um Steam had a record year in 2024 and we're expected that 2025, if Q4 finishes strong, then they could have a record year based on consumer spend. Growth in in legacy games really can be um really is there. And we believe that live ops is the key

for this. if learnings are being taken from competitors and your own mistakes and again PGC this week is a great opportunity to work within the network and understand where who's made mistakes who's who's been successful and learn from that for your own and also on the far far side not to keep mentioning EA but the core of sports IP franchises new originals really help them um lead the PC console um space while 10centent remains uh remains the king for mobile gaming and again just to kind of highlight and echo this you know with EA Sports and the and the recent acquisition. It'd be interesting to see which direction that this will take. And also with the increase in DTOC payments and typical um payments outside of stores, um this is something that Sense Stab will start to track very soon. So we're excited to see where the growth and the direction that this comes from as well. And with that, I'll finish up. Are we good for questions, Charlie?
Cool.
Any questions? Okay, Chris has a question.
Oh, no.

because you mentioned D to see which is obviously a challenge for you guys but also a big opportunity because you you were saying that the the I think AP revenue was up 10% via the stores despite a lot of money going off so that would not include DTOC revenue via their own stores right
correct yeah so we've seen yeah 10% increase across both stores um so Google Play and and iOS yeah despite D2C
so if you add D2C which some people are saying is like between I 20 or some people say as high as 50% of the big I'm not sure it's that big but it's substantial then really the numbers you know our our top level how big the market is could go up quite a bit I guess are you expecting quite a big when you start getting that data a big redraw of everything
yeah say so in terms of like a total revenue factor absolutely yeah I think that's something we're expecting to see um I won't let on too much but yeah it's something that we will have soon it's fine Yeah, I can share but I may get told

off. Um, but yeah, I think like it's really positive between the traditional source although you know we're seeing public reports and customers and and people in the room reporting that D2C is is working and they have these new revenue streams but you know the traditional methods we're still seeing revenue increase which I think is really positive for the whole market um for sure. But yeah, I think the total revenue will will potentially yeah really shock us from that perspective.
One way more quick question I'll pass on. Why do you think cuz your numbers and all the numbers I'm seeing top level of are upwards. It's return to health for mobile. It's like a PC console going well. Why do you think there's still a bit of a a malaise then?
It's a good question. Maybe one I should take the insights team. But but my perspective is I think the games industry can also often be quite negative and I think potentially the the data has always been okay if I if I'm being honest. I think because in the games industry there's so much talent and profession. I think when there's a hit to the to the industry we

potentially get a little negative about that and think that it's it's all doom and gloom. Um I think that's really from my perspective. But I think it was more of, you know, the the data's always been there that the market's doing okay and I Yeah, I think it's just more of a an opinionated thing in my opinion. Yeah.
Hello. Uh, thank you for the presentation. Uh, my question on the mobile scene is uh about the winner takes it all uh situation. So, how is the healthy of the newcomers in the market? Because uh mostly they're concentrated on the top uh franchises. uh there are being space for newcomers lately or it's concentrated all in the non-titles.
Yeah, good question. Um we yeah we actually have within our most recent report like a a market concentration kind of couple of slides where it starts to look at is it just the leaders taking the market is it becoming saturated etc. we are seeing growth from newer entrance in the market for sure. I don't have the

figures to hand but yeah I think in terms of the saturation from the from the top developers of course we are seeing the winner takes all kind of um I guess method coming into play there but we're also seeing growth from newcomers and as a business with sensar as well we're continuously working with brand new developers who are coming into the space and have a positive outlook so I think from that side um we are seeing the excitement still for for newcomers within the game so yeah I I wouldn't say it's it's just the top publishers taking it at this point.
Yeah, thank you for the talk. Um, it's still hard to predict what the future holds, but uh the any any ideas of insights about what's going to be happening in near future. Well, especially with six having a pretty major releases and how would you think it will affect the market and the industry as a whole?
Yeah, good question. Um, we're actually due to bring out uh like a 2026 um

Outlook report soon. So, keep an eye out for that for one. But I think from my perspective, I think we're seeing traditionally with the the mobile developers that we work with pivoting to PC console. Um, and I think we'll start to see stronger growth there. I think with Steam having kind of record years, I think we'll continue to see that. I think that's um almost close to assert from what we're seeing and what we're hearing. Um, from a mobile perspective, like I say, revenue is is is increasing and I think nobody truly knows what's been made from DTOC. Um, apart from public reports that we can of course access, but I think on a market level, nobody truly knows um, you know, what's what we're actually seeing from that perspective. So, I think when we get that total revenue figure, I guess, from your typical stores and third party, um, I think that will really open up some excitement within the game market um, for 2026 and beyond. Sure. Cool. Can we give Josh a round of applause, please? Thanks, everybody.

So, if you have any more questions for Joshu, please do connect with him throughout the conference. I'm sure there'll be many questions and uh data insights that he'll be able to share uh across these next couple of days. [Music]