Veronika Mikhailova

In 2019, mobile games in the USA and Canada earned $11.8 billion

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NPD and Sensor Tower analyzed the mobile games market in the USA and Canada. Audience growth in these countries is slowing down, but revenue has increased.

Analytical firms presented a joint report.

General figures

  • In 2019, mobile title revenues in the United States and Canada exceeded $11.8 billion. This is a quarter more than in 2018;
  • revenue increased for all genres of mobile games. At the same time, 56% of turnover was accounted for puzzles, social casinos and strategies;
  • The highest-grossing games of the year in the region were Candy Crush Saga (King), Pokémon GO (Niantic) and mobile Roblox (Roblox Co.);
  • the number of players also increased — by 2%, but a year earlier the figure was 5%. That is, the growth dynamics here is negative.

Forecasts

NPD analyst Mat Piscatella is confident that the profitability of mobile games will only increase in the coming years. This is due to the trend towards the subscription model and the development of other, new monetization models.

According to Piscatella, the mobile business will be strengthened by Apple Arcade, Google Play Pass and similar services with premium subscription games. In addition, the market is well influenced by the arrival of large franchises in mobile, for example, Call of Duty.

Nevertheless, despite the increase in revenue, the audience growth in the USA and Canada will not have a clear dynamics. A jump up can happen if a new hit or a stable cloud service appears on the market — for example, Microsoft xCloud, Piscatella said.

In his opinion, streaming technologies have a positive impact on the market as a whole. Thanks to the cloud, mobile devices can become a platform that unites gamers from different segments. Although, according to the analyst, the games originally designed for smartphones will still enjoy the greatest success among mobile gamers.

Recall, according to a recent App Annie report, mobile is now not only in North America, but also in the world — the most profitable segment of the industry. Experts expect that this year users’ spending on mobile titles will exceed $ 100 billion.

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