Mobile Gaming Trends in 2022: Latest Game Industry Overview & Analytics

The gaming industry nowadays is a global giant that continues to grow rapidly with each trend and innovation, and further expansion in the gaming area is inevitable. In the near future, our world and how we interact with games will be fundamentally different.
It is reported that mobile gaming generated $93.2B in 2021, a 7.3% increase YoY.  Gaming, and mobile gaming, in particular, are continuing their meteoric rise in the entertainment industry.


Let’s take a look at more game industry statistics and trends to help us understand what to expect from gaming in 2022.

Latest mobile gaming industry trends your need to know

As we all known, the mobile gmaing industry growing so fast and its competition is getting fiercer. We together talk about the most significant mobile gaming trends from the latest report for 2022, and hope it will provide you with insight into the current state of the mobile gaming market.

Here, let's get a good start to summary the new changes and dig out the new opportunities:

● Mobile game industry reality
● Play-to-earn (P2E) opportunity with Web 3.0 arrive
● Players expect PC-quality experiences on mobile
● Mobile gaming will become more social


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What's new you need to know in the mobile gaming markets analytics?

Mobile game industry statistics

● There were 82.98B game downloads in 2021 according to our report
● The consumer spending on games reached $116B in 2021
● Over 4.7 million apps and games available worldwide on the Apple App Store alone as of August 2021
● Mobile gaming makes up 57% of total gaming revenue
● Mobile gaming is expected to reach $272B by 2030
● APAC is the largest and fastest growing regional market for mobile gaming
● 21% of Android and 25% of iOS apps downloaded are games
● Google Play revenue continues to increase at a greater level than iOS App Store revenue: 19.6% to 13.2%


Looking at the fastest growing genre within mobile games, hyper-casual games were the number one genre for downloads in Q3 2021, accounting for over 3.5 billion downloads worldwide. Within the overall genre, action, puzzle, and simulation games were the most popular.
For app marketers, mobile gaming monetizes incredibly well, evolving and innovating according to the times, which means they’re able to fund their UA activity.

Microtransaction

The hesitancy from consumers to spend money in the App Store resulted in a shift in app monetization. Indie developers and studios knew they couldn’t charge the same kind of money that EA did for an app, but how could they get people to pay?
The solution was microtransactions!
People loved freemium games – they’d tell themselves, “it’s free, I’m not going to buy anything.”
When you read that the creators of Clash of Clans made $2.3 BILLION in 2016, you might take this differently. These games and microtransactions have evolved into a model that closely resembles gambling.

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Play-to-earn and nft move gaming into a new era

With so many players of Axie Infinity have created a meaningful source of income through the play-to-earn (P2E) model, and significant investment is pouring into blockchain gaming companies, the enthusiasts are calling the next major business model shift following pay-to-play and, most recently, free-to-play.

Based on the blockchain technology, P2E games let players generate income from geme playing, and assets in the game can be resold or held by the player via a crypto wallet.

The P2E model offered players a convenient way to buy or earn in-game items and resources, or to trade or sell them to other players. With the web 3.0 arriving, Play-to-earn(P2E) business model and nft is growing and will meet its new opportunities in game industry.

The game monetization and the convenience of resource exchange must be the hotest topic and become a new growth opportunity.


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Meteverse growth

Since Facebook’s re-branding the term has entered the mainstream, the keywords, such as "metaverse" or "metaverse growth", have been the buzzwords in the past year. Although it’s still unclear what the metaverse will be and look like for many app marketers, something about the metaverse will be growing clear:

● be synchronous and live
● be without any cap to concurrent users
● be a fully functioning intertwined economy,
● offer unprecedented interoperability of data and digital assets (like being able to transfer
cool skins from one game to another)
● be populated by all different kinds of content and creative experiences which created and run by a huge number of contributors

In 2022, we’ll find that the game and the metaverse become more intertwined. More innovative parts in-game experiences, more gaming brands come into the gamer's field of vision, more game peripheral industry suppliers offering the infrastructure needed to develop the metaverse; more crypto and NFT developments and new ways of applying them in the metaverse; and investor money pouring into the space.

2022 could be the year that the fuzzy vision of a metaverse begins to solidify, and definitely a space to watch.

Cloud gaming

Cloud-based games with some features such as no app downloading and cloud work are growing alike by game players. LiquidSky, Playkey, and GeForce Now are some of the great examples of cloud gaming services.

5G tech will improve the mobile gaming experiences

Why the mobile games are growing so popular?

According to Data Report, there are 5.29 billion mobile phone users. And the number of mobile phone users increases daily, with global mobile penetration expected to reach 80% by 2025. With the global number of smartphone users increasing by an average of 1 million daily.
This trend points to one conclusion – the population of potential mobile game players will keep increasing in the future.

In 2022, the introduction of 5G will provide smoother, faster, and better gaming experiences, which may benefit the mobile gaming industry.
In particular, 5G will result in faster and graphics-rich gaming experiences because of lower latency rates, improved multiplayer experiences, and upgraded streaming of games.

The mobile gaming industry must also be prepared for speedier gaming experiences, which will, in turn, require an upgrade for reward acquisition and delivery to match gamer demands.

Games bring in more social features

The gaming community has always been strong. We estimate that roughly two-thirds (or more) of the top 50 mobile games currently have at least one social function.

These social features are the most common in mobile games:
● In-game chat
● social media connection
● Guilds
● Co-op Modes
● PvP modes

Many mobile games are now expanding their social features, especially those from Asia. There are also great western examples. Facebook reports that four in ten new U.S. gamers (38%) prefer to chat with other gamers when playing games, compared to three out ten (29%) U.S. gamers.

Hangout rooms can offered more than a place for players to interact. They can also bring an excellent opportunity for game monetization, since the game players are often need a place for avatars, skins, and gear to be displayed. It's also a perfect way for users to stay connected.