Consumer spending on mobile games fell in the first quarter of 2022

Consumer spending on mobile games fell 7.1% year-over-year to $21 billion in Q1 2022, with App Store and Google Play seeing less revenue compared to the prior year period .

Mobile games on Apple’s platform recorded around $12.9 billion, down 2.3% year-on-year, while Google Play saw its mobile game revenue drop 13.8% on a year to $8.1 billion, reports Sensor Tower.

The three top-grossing mobile games overall as well as on the App Store all came from Chinese publishers this quarter.

Tencent’s Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile, including its Chinese localization Game for Peace, came out on top with $735.4 million and $643 million generated across the two stores. MiHoYo’s Genshin Impact came in third with $551 million in player spend.

On Google Play, NCSoft’s Lineage W was the top earner, followed by Moon Active’s Coin Master and King’s Candy Crush Saga.

Global mobile game downloads grew 2.1% year-on-year in 1Q22, reaching 14.4 billion. This was primarily due to Google Play, which grew 2.5% year-on-year to 12.1 billion first-time downloads this quarter. App Store game installs were flat Y/Y, holding at 2.3 billion.

Garena’s hugely popular battle royale title, Garena Free Fire, has had the most downloads on the App Store and Google Play as well as the Google Marketplace, with 71.2 million installs across both platforms .

It was followed by Sybo Games’ Subway Surfers, which had 66.4 million installs across both stores and also topped the App Store rankings. The third most downloaded title overall was Homa Games’ Merge Master – Dinosaur Fusion, which reached 49.4 million installs.

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