The government orders of being homebound to stay safe have encouraged people to discover different ways to kill time. Due to restrictions on physical movements, people are spending more time playing games for entertainment. Apart from this, the affordability of smartphones and high-speed internet have made mobile gaming a popular source of entertainment for people regardless of age and location. This has led to an unprecedented surge in the mobile gaming industry during the ongoing pandemic.
App installs for mobile games surged 45% in 2020 as per the “State of Gaming App Marketing” report. The IMARC Group report predicts that since 2020, the global online gaming market is worth $167.9 Billion whereas India’s online gaming industry is worth ₹91 Billion which is expected to reach up to ₹187 Billion by the year 2022.
Making people feel relaxed and relieved from the ongoing environmental disruption, the Indian gaming industry recorded 365 Million new users in 2020. and here is how this change has impacted the growth of mobile gaming
Rise in app installs and app spending:
Total installs of hyper casual games grew by 90% this year.
Non-organic installs for hyper casual games that are easy to master this year jumped 250%, ahead of the casual (58%), midcore (72%), hardcore (21%) and social casino (27%) categories, as per AppsFlyer.
A vast majority of the Indians enjoyed playing freemium games but with continued nationwide lockdown, gamers switched to paid games that observed a spike of 15% and freemium games and a spike of 8% in app installs.
In-app spending rose 25% from February 2020 to May 2020 as consumers installed gaming apps and began to spend money on in-game features.
Change in Gaming Business Model:
GameIndustry.biz showcased that the games like Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing were released during lockdown days and have maintained sales breaking the record, post-launch.
During the pandemic the overall sales across the market were 63% wherein, new game downloads were 80% and total game downloads were 50%.
As users tend to devote more time to exploring and playing different games thus, different platforms like Facebook & YouTube Gaming have also observed a 20% increase in time spent by the users.
Gamers spent more than $19 billion on mobile games in 2020’s second quarter.
We can clearly see the growth of the mobile gaming industry during the pandemic because of it being simpler and more convenient than other channels while providing just as much fun. Let’s see how this growth will be impacted post pandemic.
