In 2020, there was a 51.3% and 30.2% growth in revenue from games for Google Play Store and Apple App Store respectively, according to estimates. The revenue that accrued from in app purchases of games on the Apple app store and Google Play Store hit 30.2%, and 51.3% respectively in the year under review, according to data from an app analytics firm named Sensor Tower.
Android games in-app purchases also grew from $76 million the previous year to $115 million in 2020 according to estimates, while the amount spent on the Apple app store moved from the previous $45, 4 million to $59.1 million, all based on information from sensor tower.
While the health crisis lasted, gaming witnessed very huge growth, with many users migrating to paid gaming from the freemium packages, according to the head of Industry Intelligence Group in CyberMedia Research (CMR), Prabhu Ram.
The most recent consumer research conducted by the CMRin 2020 revealed that out of every 10 serious gamers, 6 tend to purchase gaming apps. In India also, out of every 9 female users, four also bought gaming apps. The same line of trends was also reported for real money gaming apps where players can play and compete for real cash like CSGOLuck.
There was a 7 fold increase in the number of fantasy players in the Mobile Premier League (MPL). Towards the twilight of 2020, WinZO games confirmed that the number of paid players in their platform increased by 10 folds during the year, as against the year before. Talking about these, the co-founder of WinZO games, Saumya Singh Rathore posited that their new releases like tennis, chess, and WCC by NextWave have witnessed huge transactions in the past few months.
According to advertisements, the free to play gaming market has had a very huge clutch on India. Because of this, the revenue generated from user payments in the country has been very low when compared to that of other markets like the United States. According to industry experts, the revenue growth witnessed from user spending in 2020 boils down to a growth in the number of users, instead of a mindset or behavioral shift towards payments.
Some amount of conversion to paid users was witnessed, no doubt, but it is volumes that mostly drive the growth. With more people involved, more revenue is generated. Paid gaming still comes with some barriers, and the gates are not yet entirely wild open, according to Oliver Jones, the director and co-founder of a game development company named Bombay Play.
