In 2020, the new crown epidemic struck the world. Its outbreak paralyzed economic activity around the world, but one of its economic categories, the applied economy, showed a different growth momentum. The new crown epidemic has spawned a continuous surge in the installation of mobile games under the “home economy”. User interaction and monetization methods are changing dynamically. Faced with the uncertainty of the new normal, do you have any question marks?

According to the “Game Marketing Status Report 2020″ released by AppsFlyer recently, we can see that it has comprehensively analyzed the global mobile game industry trends in the first quarter of 2020 from the four aspects of regional market growth, user interaction, revenue and cheating . It uses data samples covering 38 billion user installations, statistical monitoring of more than 20,000 mobile applications, and the average daily active users monitored reach 4.5 billion, and paid users reach 220 million. This can be said to be very professional and comprehensive.

Domatters sorted out the following highlights about”Game Marketing Status Report 2020”.And we focused on the gaming situation in the Chinese market：

• Ultra-casual games continue to lead installations to climb, and app sessions decline slightly

In 2020, the daily active users of Q1 ultra-casual games continued to rise, but the number of application sessions decreased slightly. Ultra-casual games have always been favored by many users because of their flexible schedules and relaxed energy input, which has always been a great choice for game users to kill time and relieve daily stress.

It is worth noting that the number of ultra-casual game application installations in the United States increased by 656% year-on-year this year, making it the world’s largest ultra-casual game market. Of course, China, Russia, India and other markets are also gradually bullish.

Data source from: AppsFlyer

• We pay attention to increment, but also to quality

Due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, a large number of new game users poured into various game categories during the epidemic, which lowered the overall user quality. Game retention rates are generally down from last year. In addition to the increase in the viscosity of moderate game users, the viscosity of users of other game sub-types generally declined.

The uninstallation of game apps is still serious. From the point of view of the installation system, the average uninstall rate of the Android system is higher than that of the ios system, and the uninstall rate of the game subtypes is more than 50% within 30 days; from the perspective of the installation type, the average uninstall rate of the unnatural installation is generally higher than the natural installation.

Data source from: AppsFlyer

Let’s take a look at the use of mobile terminals by game users worldwide. Among the mobile terminal models used by game users around the world, Apple iPhone 7 occupies the first position, with an occupation rate of 1.49%. The second is Samsung Galaxy a10, with a occupancy rate of 1.26%. Among Chinese manufacturers, OPPO’s cph1909 and Xiaomi’s Redmi 6a entered the top 20. In the first quarter of 2020, Chinese manufacturers accounted for more than 40% of Android-branded mobile phones used by global game users, of which Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, and vivo accounted for a large share. Chinese mobile phone manufacturers and brands accounted for The proportion continues to rise.

Based on the iOS and Android related data, in the first quarter of 2020, among the globally-installed Unity engine application installation terminals, action games became the most installed game type, with 405 million terminal installations in the United States, 391 million terminal installations in India, and 305 million terminal installation. The top three game types in China are action games 34.84%, simulation games 17.36% and decrypt games 9.43%.

Market share of Android phone brands used by global game users

Data source: Chinese Sound and Number Association Game Working Committee (GPC) & Unity

To cope with the challenges of retention and offloading, remarketing is a significant marketing method. As the mobile games using remarketing , the 30-day retention rate of Q4 in 2019 increased by 104%.

• Game advertising revenue is sluggish

The impact of the new crown epidemic on consumer spending is a 35% increase in revenue. In 2020, Q1 advertising revenue was generally sluggish. The average proportion of in-app advertising (IAA) per game sub-type is only rising in the gaming category, while the rest has declined. Among them, there are more advertisements in casual games. In-app purchases (IAP) are still high, and the game types are mainly casual.

Data source from: AppsFlyer

• In-app cheating rises

With the efforts of the entire industry this year, installation cheating has declined significantly. The cheating rate of application installation of each game sub-type is showing a downward trend month by month. At the same time, in-app cheating is still rampant. Compared with 2019, the rate of in-app cheating in Q1 in 2020 has increased. Among them, the cheating rate of moderate games and severe games has reached a new high, reaching 29% and 59% respectively.

Data source from: AppsFlyer

The Current status of China’s game industry

At the beginning of 2020, the sudden new coronary pneumonia epidemic had a certain impact on the development of our national economy. However, with the staged victory in epidemic prevention and control, and the steady progress of resumption of production and production, everything will gradually be on the right track.

Specific to the game industry, the relevant impacts gradually change and appear as follows:

The decrease in people’s offline entertainment and the rapid increase in online consumption are good for the game industry in the short term. Like online entertainment such as online video, online live broadcast, online literature, online music, etc., the user scale and product revenue have achieved a phased explosive growth. However, the occurrence of this epidemic has also affected the mid- and long-term development of the game industry.

Most of the revenue growth at this stage is due to explosive products of large companies, board games, and casual games. However, it is worth noting that the head effect of China’s mobile game market is still obvious. Among the top ten products, Tencent and NetEase accounted for eight seats, and the Matthew effect is obvious.

Let’s take a look at specific market segments together:

In the first quarter of 2020, the actual sales revenue of China’s mobile game market grew rapidly, and the actual sales revenue and the market share of market segments further expanded. the PC game market and the web game market continued to shrink, and the actual sales revenue and market share declined significantly.

• The percentage of revenue in China’s game industry segment market

In the Chinese game segment, the actual sales revenue of the mobile game market was 55.37 billion yuan, accounting for 75.64% of the overall revenue, and the market share of mobile games was further expanded. The actual sales revenue of the Client game market was 14.350 billion yuan, and the proportion dropped to 19.60%. The proportion of actual sales revenue in the web game market dropped to 2.82%, at 2.063 billion yuan. With the gradual popularization of 5G and the improvement of hardware facilities, the cloud gaming market has formed a certain income scale.

• The Chinese client game market has reached the stage of stock competition

In the first quarter of 2020, the Chinese client game market has gradually entered a mature stage and entered the stage of stock competition. In addition to the development of the mobile game market and cloud games, the internal competition in  the Chinese client game market industry is fierce and the development rate has slowed down. The actual sales revenue of China’s client game market was 14.35 billion yuan, which continued to decline. The lack of innovative products and the suspension of business in Internet cafes across the country were the main reasons.

•                                                                            Actual sales revenue of Chinese game market

• The web game market has shrunk

In the past few years, there have been fewer relevant R&D and operation vendors in the web game market, and the user scale has gradually declined, and the entire market is already in a recession period. The actual sales revenue of the web game market decreased from 2.589 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2019 to 2.063 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2020, which decreased by 526 million yuan.

• The number of Chinese game users has increased

In the first quarter of 2020, China’s mobile game users reached 650 million. The increase in the number of game users in China mainly comes from mobile game users. From the third quarter of 2019, the growth rate of user size has stabilized.

Chinese game user scale

Among them, China’s secondary yuan game users reached 131 million, an increase of 12.93% from the previous quarter, the highest growth rate from the first quarter of 2019 to the present. This shows that the scale of China’s secondary yuan game users has a rapid growth rate and good development prospects. The actual sales revenue of China’s secondary game market reached 7.620 billion yuan, an increase of 40.59% month-on-month, achieving rapid growth. The future growth potential of the secondary game market is huge.

The number of e-sports game users has also expanded. From 445 million people in the third quarter of 2019 to 482 million people in the first quarter of 2020, an increase of 8.31%. The actual sales revenue of China’s e-sports game market was 39.102 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 67.32%. This was mainly due to the small-scale explosive growth in the actual sales revenue of mobile e-sports games. Affected by the downturn in the PC game market, the actual sales revenue of client e-sports games continued to decrease. In the first quarter of 2020, its actual sales revenue dropped to 7.912 billion yuan, which is in stark contrast to mobile-end eSports games.

The scale of female game users in China increased by 17.05% from last month, from 290 million people in the same period last year to 357 million people. There is still a large room for growth.

The game industry will face new opportunities and challenges, and hope everything gets better and better!If your mobile game wants to enter the Chinese market, we can give you some suggestions and help to do online promoting.

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