The mobile games market is growing rapidly. Unity looked at what is happening on it now and identified six main trends for 2022. She shared her reasoning in a new large study.
In total, the study contains six paragraphs on the number of trends. In them, Unity not only described the trends themselves, but also explained how information about them can be used. At the end of each paragraph, the company listed its own tools and services that can help developers.
Below is a brief description of three such trends.
1. Mobile is growing faster than all other segments in the gaming industry
According to Unity, an increasing part of the revenue in the gaming industry will go to mobile.
It’s all about the availability of smartphones. According to the estimates of the analytical firm Statista, by the end of 2021, 4 billion people will use smartphones. Almost half of them (1.8 billion) will also play mobile games. In 2025, there will be 2.2 billion mobile gamers.
What volumes of revenue are we talking about? According to a Newzoo study commissioned by Unity, mobile games will earn over $85 billion in 2021. This figure will exceed $100 billion in 2023. This is 51% of the total revenue of the industry.
2. Competition is growing, and with it the methods of working with genres and monetization
Gamers are playing longer and spending more than ever before. For example, in 2016-2020, the retention of the 30th day increased by 7.1%, and the conversion rate from in-game purchases increased by 7.7%. Also in 2020, mobile advertising revenue increased by more than 8%.
This has led to the fact that more and more developers are trying to get “their piece of the pie”. To do this, they have to experiment with genres and monetization, among other things. Now among the most popular categories of games are hyper-casual projects and midcore titles. Most of these games are free—to-play and earn mainly through advertising or in-game purchases.
By the way, Unity calls rewarded advertising one of the most effective types of mobile advertising at the moment (when after viewing the user receives a bonus for the game). In particular, it significantly bypasses banner advertising in terms of CTR clickability.
3. Players need more social features
According to Unity, social elements in games will gain more and more weight over time. This was partly facilitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused people to lack communication. Another important factor is the deployment of 5G networks, thanks to which it has become easier to release high—budget multiplayer games on smartphones.
You can read more about these and other trends, as well as read Unity’s tips here.
***
Recall that at the end of last week Unity launched the Unity Gaming Services platform in beta mode. It contains a large set of tools for operating games (they support Android, iOS, Linux, Mac and Windows — console support is available by invitation only). You can still use the platform itself for free.