Arena and adventure games are both set to exceed $4.7 billion in revenue in 2023, according to Sensor Tower’s latest report. The two genres have the highest income from in-app purchases worldwide.
Ultra-casual titles without stories saw the highest number of downloads, with 2.3 billion between January and July 2023. This was followed by board game titles at 2.1 billion.
Several genres saw massive surges in revenue between January and July, among them hypercasual, space, and post-apocalyptic. The report highlights Eggy Party in particular - the game has emerged as a strong performer in NetEase’s portfolio, and has driven the revenue of the game show genre to surge 18 times year-on-year, exceeding $270 million.
Doomsday is here
The post-apocalyptic genre saw an 81% year-on-year increase in downloads, with games such as Whiteout Survival and Frozen City demonstrating the strong market potential of the genre. Notably, the genre has seen an upswing across platforms, driven partly by the worldwide success of HBO’s The Last of Us.
The larger doomsday genre - which includes post-apocalyptic and zombie games - has proven to be a particular success for Chinese developers, who developed every one of the top ten highest-grossing and top-growing games from January to July.
Among the top 100 Chinese mobile games by overseas revenue, those within the Doomsday genre contributed 16% of total revenue, with Whiteout Survival identified as a particularly strong performer, generating over $100 million from January to July.
The weapons genre saw a 200% increase in downloads year-on-year, marking it as the fastest-growing genre.
THe report also notes the success of adventure title Devil M, which generated $36 million in the analysed period, identifying it as one of the top mobile games overseas. However, the best-performing adventure title was Yuan Shen, which Sensor Tower notes topped the genre’s revenue charts.
We listed NetEase as one of the top 50 mobile game makers of 2022. We'll be unveiling our list for 2023 at Gamescom on August 22.
