Consumer Spending on Mobile Games Drops 5% Despite Record Breaking Downloads

The mobile gaming industry seemed unstoppable after ten years of nonstop growth, but in spite of the fact that this is the case, the coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench into the works. This created inflation as well as widespread economic turmoil that made growth far more difficult than might have been the case otherwise. Furthermore, user targeting became harder than ever before, which decreased the value of mobile gaming companies around the world.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that mobile gaming downloads just reached an all time high of 89.7 billion. However, despite the record breaking number of downloads, consumer spending on mobile gaming apps decreased by 5% year over year. This seems to suggest that consumers aren’t spending as much money as they used to on mobile games, even though they are downloading them with a higher level of frequency.

One thing to mention here is that the pre-pandemic highs still pale in comparison to 2022’s totals. Back in 2019, consumer spending on mobile games hovered at around $86 billion. On the other hand, gaming apps earned approximately $109.5 billion in 2022.

While this is still roughly half a billion dollars lower than the numbers seen in 2021, it is still a massive $23 billion increase from 2019 with all things having been considered and taken into account. Additionally, a number of individual games such as Genshin Impact are setting new milestones in terms of earnings. Genshin Impact’s lifetime in-app purchases crossed $3 billion in the second quarter of 2022.

Gamers are clearly willing to spend billions on the games of their choice. What’s more, much of the growth in downloads was driven by hyper casual games which are not known for in-app spending from consumers because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up driving away users.

It will be interesting to see if this minor dip continues through to the next year. Even if that occurs, the gaming app industry seems fairly secure in its prospects.

Read next: New Research Says Consumers Are Downbeat About The Economy With 91% Reducing Their Spending
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World