Global reports and market data
Documents
The Take-Two Diaspora: Why Alumni Win Big in Mobile, Not AAA
The analysis examines the investment trajectory of companies founded by former senior executives from Take-Two Interactive and its subsidiaries.
- Former Take-Two senior executives founded 23 startups between 2020 and 2025, securing $1.2 billion in capital across 43 deals.
- Dream Games, a prominent alumni-led studio, achieved a $2.5 billion exit in July 2025, highlighting the high valuation potential of these ventures.
- Alumni-led firms significantly outperform industry benchmarks, with a 60% rate of raising a second funding round within one year compared to the 20% industry average.
Beyond the Game: How Gamification is Becoming Mainstream
The analysis examines how gamification—applying game-like mechanics such as streaks, leaderboards, and reward loops—to non-gaming consumer apps has shifted the mobile app economy over a five-year period (2020-2025).
- Gamified non-gaming apps have surpassed mobile games in net revenue, generating $21.2 billion in Q2 2025 compared to $19.8 billion for games.
- Gamified apps are driving a 24% year-over-year growth in mobile consumer spending, while traditional mobile gaming revenue has stagnated.
- EdTech, Fitness & Wellness, and Entertainment & Social account for $20.7 billion in transaction value, with EdTech dominating deal volume (43%) and exit activity (45%).
AI Eats the World
Generative AI is positioned as the latest platform shift that will reshape value capture across the global tech ecosystem, with investment surging even as its ultimate impact remains uncertain.
- Hyperscaler capital expenditure is projected to reach $350 billion in 2025, nearly doubling 2024 levels as data-center investment outpaces office construction.
- Silicon supply constraints at Nvidia and TSMC, combined with power and permitting limitations, represent the primary bottlenecks threatening to throttle AI growth.
- Despite 800 million weekly active users, the paying-user base for AI models remains at approximately 5%, highlighting a significant gap in monetization.
Investing and Financial Management App Market and Advertising Trends 2025
Investment-management and crypto trading applications have accelerated growth in 2025, with global downloads rising 12% to about five billion.
- Global downloads for investment and crypto trading apps rose 12% in 2025, reaching approximately five billion total downloads.
- User demographics are heavily male-skewed, with crypto apps reaching over 90% male users and emerging markets like India and Vietnam reporting only 13–17% female participation.
- Market preferences are geographically fragmented: U.S. and Japanese users favor established brokerages, while consumers in India and Southeast Asia prioritize local, mobile-centric platforms.
1H 2025 Amazon Retail Media: An Inside Look at How Brands Are Showing Up
Amazon Retail Media dominated the first half of 2025, capturing $618 million in ad spend—more than double Walmart’s $236 million and nearly six times Chewy’s $105 million—while attracting 9,542 unique advertisers, a figure nine times larger than Walmart’s 1,076.
- Amazon Retail Media dominated the market in 1H 2025 with $618 million in ad spend, significantly outpacing Walmart ($236 million) and Chewy ($105 million).
- Amazon’s advertiser base is nine times larger than Walmart’s, hosting 9,542 unique advertisers compared to Walmart’s 1,076.
- Samsung, Unilever, and L’Oréal were the top spenders in 1H 2025, contributing $7.1 million, $5.7 million, and $5.3 million respectively.
State of Mobile 2025: Why Community Wins on Mobile
The State of Mobile 2025 report examines the current mobile ecosystem, emphasizing how community engagement—particularly on Reddit—drives sustained app growth.
- Reddit-acquired users demonstrate significantly higher lifetime value, with 41% higher Day-1 spend than other social platforms and 159% higher than digital media.
- Reddit users exhibit superior long-term retention and engagement, spending 55% more time in-app on Day 1 and 103% more by Day 30 compared to other channels.
- Global mobile in-app purchase revenue reached $150 billion in 2024, representing a 13% year-over-year increase, while total usage hit 4.2 trillion hours.
Where the UGC Dollars Flow: Mapping $9B Investments in Creator Economy
The analysis maps a $9 billion investment wave in user-generated content (UGC) gaming from 2020 to 2025, covering roughly 80 companies and titles.
- The UGC gaming sector attracted $9 billion in total investment between 2020 and 2025, with $8.9 billion concentrated in late-stage and corporate deals.
- Strategic investment from industry incumbents is a primary driver, highlighted by Sony/Kirkbi’s $2 billion commitment in 2022 and Disney’s $1.5 billion investment in 2024.
- Creator monetization is scaling rapidly, with Roblox and Fortnite collectively disbursing approximately $1.5 billion to developers in 2024 and reporting a 38% quarterly earnings increase between Q2 and Q3 2023.
Game Data: Building vs Buying
The document evaluates the trade-offs between building an in-house data pipeline and purchasing a third-party solution for game analytics, using GameAnalytics’ PipelineIQ Pro as the primary example.
- Building an in-house data pipeline for a studio with 5 million MAU costs approximately $50,000 per month, compared to $5,900 per month for a third-party solution like GameAnalytics’ PipelineIQ Pro.
- Human capital is the primary cost driver for both approaches, accounting for 89% of the budget for in-house builds and 78% for vendor-managed pipelines.
- Third-party solutions offer significantly faster deployment timelines, ranging from hours to days, whereas custom in-house pipelines typically require months to implement.
Game Analytics 100: The Retention Curve
The analysis demonstrates that player retention in mobile games can be accurately modeled with a power-law curve, expressed either as \(r(n)=a\,b^n\) or \(r(n)=a\,n^{b}\).
- Mobile game retention follows a predictable power-law curve, modeled as r(n)=an^b, which allows analysts to forecast long-term player behavior using only day-1, day-3, and day-7 cohort data.
- Fitting retention curves enables precise lifetime value (LTV) projections; for example, an average revenue of $1.00 per daily active user results in an LTV90 of 7.65 and an LTV180 of 10.17.
- Analysts can derive the initial retention level (a) and decay exponent (b) by applying the LINEST function to logged cohort values in Excel, yielding representative curves such as r(n)=0.396n^-0.472.
A Shortcut to Your Own Game Insights Platform
The guide presents a turnkey solution for game studios to build an in-house data pipeline without the high costs of custom engineering.
- GameAnalytics provides a turnkey data pipeline that eliminates the need for custom ETL development, proprietary SDKs, and ongoing infrastructure maintenance.
- The platform offers two primary data delivery methods: Player Warehouse for daily refreshed, SQL-ready event tables and Raw Export for real-time JSON streaming.
- A publisher utilizing Raw Export achieved a 50% increase in lifetime value (LTV) across 19 titles, while a VR MMO leveraged Player Warehouse to improve player engagement.
Your Data Tracking Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide for GameAnalytics
GameAnalytics presents a structured framework for designing and implementing data tracking within games, emphasizing the creation of a comprehensive tracking plan that aligns analytics teams with development stakeholders.
- Establish a structured tracking plan by aligning business objectives and player behavior questions with seven predefined event categories: Session, Business, Resource, Progression, Error, Ads, and Impression.
- Limit custom events to a maximum of 50 unique identifiers to maintain data integrity and prevent system clutter.
- Adopt a consistent Category > Sub-Action naming framework to ensure clarity and prevent redundant or misleading data collection.
Playing for the Planet: Untangling the Carbon Complexities of the Video Gaming Industry
The analysis demonstrates that the video-gaming sector remains fragmented in its approach to carbon accounting, with only a minority of companies—12 out of 222 surveyed—committed to science-based targets.
- Only 12 out of 222 surveyed gaming companies have committed to science-based carbon reduction targets, highlighting a significant industry-wide gap in formal climate accountability.
- Scope 3 emissions—specifically purchased goods (Category 1) and the use of sold products (Category 11)—represent the dominant share of the industry's total carbon footprint.
- Energy consumption during gameplay varies significantly by hardware, with current-generation consoles drawing 150–200W and PCs reaching up to 300W, compared to only a few watts for mobile devices.