Newzoo has published a review of the gaming market of the United Arab Emirates

The other day, the analytical company Newzoo shared an analysis of the Arab Emirates market on the pages of its blog. The study tells about the gaming demographics, payment habits, reasons for the game, favorite genres and franchises in this country.

The main facts of the study:

• Three quarters of the online population of the United Arab Emirates (hereinafter UAE) play games;
• the lion’s share of players prefer to play mobile, but many also play on PC and consoles;
• the share of female players in the mobile segment is almost the same as male, but among console gamers there are significantly fewer of them than men;

Segmentation of the online gaming audience of the United Arab Emirates by platformlast year, the UAE gaming market generated $283 million, more than half of this amount came from mobile — $163 million;

• considering the 10 million population of the whole country, this is a lot;
• half of the online residents of the Emirates are paying players;
• 39% of players spend money on mobile games, 38% of gamers spend money on console games, 33% — on PC games;
• there are also a lot of players among the online mobile audience in the UAE who pay average amounts — 31% of the entire online audience (in Western Europe, for example, there are only 18% of them);
• the number of players paying substantial amounts in mobile is also large — 7% (against 4% in Western Europe);
• at the same time, the level of “dolphins” and “whales” among players spending money on console and PC games does not differ from that in the countries of the Old World.

The share of paying players relative to the UAE’s online audiencethe main reasons for playing in the UAE are: the desire to “kill time”, also among the popular ones are escapism and socialization;

• the most popular mobile genre in the UAE, according to Newzoo, is puzzles: 40% of the population noted that they like it;
• according to the survey, racing is in second place (35%), shooters are in third place (33%), and sports games are in fourth place (32%);
• The most popular games in the country are Candy Crush Saga, FIFA and Call of Duty, and titles such as Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, Mario, Final Fantasy and Uncharted are also well—known (Newzoo claims that the latter are on average much more popular in the UAE than the world average).

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Part of the data on the basis of which the Newzoo study was prepared was collected through surveys of residents of the main cities (which ones, it is not reported, but most likely, we are talking about the capitals of the seven emirates that are part of the state: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Ras al Khaimah, Umm al-Qaywain, Fujairah and Sharjah) aged 10 to 50 years.

Also on the topic:

• Mobile Games Audience analysis in the Middle EastGoogle: Translation into Arabic increased Castle Clash revenues from the Middle East and North Africa market by 58%
• An indie company from Sweden has bought an Arab publisher of freeplay games for $17 million
• Is there any news?