Current and future genre trends for mobile games
With the decision to develop a new gaming app, developers need to decide in which genre their new game should take place. But this decision is not always easy. What are current popular trends? Will the genre stay relevant over time? We want to answer these questions in this month’s insights and, by that, try to make the developers’ decisions a bit easier.
A look back at 2020
2020 has been a rough year for most of us. Especially businesses suffered under the quarantine. But not the gaming industry. Game studios prevailed and, in fact, benefited from the lockdown and its limitations. If you want to read more about the gaming industry during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, take a look at this insights article: https://www.1upcapital.co/insights/how-corona-changed-gaming
But which genres have been the top-performing ones in 2020? At the top of the list, we can find the Hyper casual games with puzzle and Trivia genres. These were especially popular in the western world and, according to SocialPeta, made up 25% of all newly created 25 million games during 2020. In second and third place in the number of new games created are role-playing and arcade games, respectively. Noteworthy here is that puzzle games were not under the top 3 highest-grossing games in 2020. These places go to titles in the field of MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena), RPG (Role Playing Games) and MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing games), which are particularly popular in Asian countries.
Popularity depends on region
As mentioned previously, the popularity of mobile gaming genres varies depending on the region and country in which they were downloaded. But let’s have a more detailed look. The graphic below, which is created by DataMagic, shows the popularity of the different genres by country. What stands out is that Mobile Action/MMO RPG games are widely unpopular in western countries, especially in the U.S. but seemingly have countless fans in countries like South Korea, China and Taiwan. There are, however, examples of genres that enjoy high popularity in almost all regions, such as “party battlers”.
What does the future hold for mobile gaming genres?
The future looks bright for mobile gaming. There is no sign that the current upwards trend will go down any time soon, and app developers can look with excitement into the future. In terms of genres, we expect that Mobile RPGs will continue to rise in the Asian sector and will eventually hold its ground in the western market as well, as it is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 9% to nearly $22,500 million by 2023. Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas will remain popular in both the Asian and western markets, and rising numbers of new titles are to be expected. Further, the battle royal hype has long spread to mobile phones, and we don’t expect this genre to vanish any time soon. For example, player spending on PUBG mobile has crossed the 1.6 billion U.S. dollar mark in September 2020. But what are genres you should rather stay away from? In terms of revenue, tamagotchi, adventure, and crafting & building ranked worst in the western world for 2020. Whatever you choose to do, be sure to check out our other Insights on the 1Up Capital website or reach out to us to bring your game to the next level.
