The US mobile games market has faced a recession during the first half of 2022. According to Sensor Tower, nearly all genres saw their revenues decline from the previous year.
Genshin Impact
Sensor Tower analyzed revenue and downloads for 14 main game categories across the App Store and Google Play to see how the global crisis, inflation, IDFA changes, and other macroeconomic factors affected the market.
- In the first half of 2021, the Arcade genre grew 14.8% year-over-year to $176 million. Idler, the largest subgenre in the category, generated $88 million (up 35.3%).
- Tabletop games grew 0.9% year-over-year to almost $388.8 million.
- All other mobile genres saw a decline in revenue, with Racing showing the largest decrease at 28.8%.
- Despite a 8.8% decline, Puzzle was the largest genre by player spending in the first half of 2022, with $2.3 billion.
- It was followed by Casino ($2.2 billion, down 10.9% year-over-year) and Strategy ($2 billion, down 9.2%).
- Action was the only genre to show growth in downloads during the first six months of 2022, rising by 5.4% to 54.7 million installs.
- Genshin Impact was the number one action game by downloads, generating 2.3 million installs.
- The Sports genre was the only category to show no decline. All other genres saw their downloads decrease, with Casino falling by 17.8% year-over-year.
- Despite a 13.7% decline, Hypercasual was the number one genre by downloads, with 718.2 million. It was followed by Puzzle and Arcade.
- As noted by Sensor Tower, the US mobile games market generated $11.4 billion in the first half of 2022, which is down 9.6% year-over-year. Downloads declined by 2.5% to 2.4 billion.
Analysts cite inflation, a rise in the cost of living, privacy changes, and the end of many pandemic-related restrictions as the main reasons for this recession. More data about the US games market and the numbers for the second quarter can be found in the full report.