Adjust and Sensor Tower have released their annual report on Japan’s app market. It covers four verticals: games, finance, entertainment, and manga (comics).

I will focus on games, but I will also cover the other segments in broad strokes.

Adjust’s data covers the top 5,000 apps from January 2024 to May 2026. H1 2026 in the report runs from January to May, not a full six months. The charts and market estimates come from Sensor Tower, for January-March 2026.

The app market

• In 2025, Japan downloaded 2.65 billion apps and spent 114 billion hours in them.

• Smartphone penetration is around 85%, and iOS share is 67-68%, one of the highest of any major market.

• App installs grew 4% YoY in H1’26, with March as the peak month. Growth was stronger in 2025: +8% in installs and +3% in sessions.

• Mobile games accounted for $10.6 billion of that IAP revenue and 16.58 billion hours, according to Sensor Tower. Last autumn, Sensor Tower put the Japanese market at $11 billion for the 12 months from August 2024 to July 2025.

• The top apps by downloads in Q1’26: ChatGPT, TikTok, and Google Gemini. By revenue, the top two spots go to manga services ピッコマ and LINEマンガ, with Google One third.

• There are now four games in the top 10 by consumer spend: Last War: Survival (4th), モンスターストライク (7th), Umamusume: Pretty Derby (8th), and プロ野球スピリッツA (10th). In the 2024 edition of the report, that same chart had 8 games out of 10.

Games

• Mobile game installs in Japan grew 3% YoY in H1’26, and sessions grew 5%.

• The best months across the two years, relative to the yearly average, were March 2025 (+23% in installs, +6% in sessions), August 2025 (+7% and +3%), and January 2026 (+5% and +7%).

• Card games grew fastest in H1’26: installs rose 18% YoY and sessions 113%. Slots grew 7% in installs and 5% in sessions YoY.

• In the other genres, session counts rose while installs fell. Hyper casual was -4% in installs and +14% in sessions; hybrid casual was -7% and +9%; and simulation was -1% and +9%.

• Puzzle (25%) and hyper casual (22%) lead the country in install share. Puzzle also comes first in sessions at 26%, while hyper casual accounts for just 7%.

• The widest gap between sessions and installs is in sports games: 4% vs. 10%.

• On installs, iOS and Android are broadly even, but iOS accounts for 66% of sessions.

• The average game session length is 26.99 minutes (+1% vs. 2025). Card games gained the most: 30.84 minutes, 21% more than a year earlier. Hybrid casual grew 10% (29.28 minutes), and strategy grew 8% (27.09 minutes).

• On install day in Q1’26, there were 1.85 sessions per user, against 1.81 in 2025 and 1.76 in 2024. Idle RPG leads with 2.08, followed by strategy (1.98) and puzzle (1.93).

• Retention grew across every day measured. D1 Retention in Q1’26 was 26% against 24% in Q1’25, D7 was 11% against 9%, D14 7% against 6%, and D30 4% against 3%.

• The paid-to-organic ratio fell in Q1’26 across every subvertical Adjust measures. Action was at 2.78 in Q1’26 against 2.96 in 2025, card games at 1.93 against 2.65, casino at 0.59 against 0.98, Swap at 2.08 against 2.32, and strategy at 2.1 against 2.2.

• CPI fell as well. Cost per install in action was $0.84 in Q1’26 against $0.99 in 2025, in adventure games $1.61 against $2.45, in arcade $0.69 against $0.75, and in board games $2.11 against $2.26.

• The top games by downloads in Q1’26: Block Blast!, 心动小镇, and Order Crazy. By consumer spend: Last War: Survival, モンスターストライク, and Umamusume: Pretty Derby.

• Only one Japanese game made the top 10 by installs: HUNTER×HUNTER NEN×SURVIVOR. In the top 10 by consumer spend, there are eight.

The other verticals

• Finance apps are growing quickly in Japan, with stock trading growing the fastest. Installs grew 90% in H1’26, largely thanks to the revamped NISA program, which is pushing younger people to invest in the stock market.

• Entertainment apps added 4% in installs, with an average session of 32.84 minutes. Short drama services are drawing strong interest in the country.

• Manga services hold the top two spots in Japan’s overall consumer spend chart. That said, the vertical rests on an adult audience. The chapters-unlock model doesn't work as well with younger readers, who are moving to vertical drama services and social video.

Source

The German association game has published its annual industry report. I covered the 2025 market figures in April, so this time it focuses more on the audience, the state of the industry, and Gamescom.

Market and audience data comes from a YouGov Shopper survey of 25,000 people, along with data from Sensor Tower, Nielsen IQ, and GSD. Company and employment figures come from the gamesmap.de database as of 31 March 2026.

Audience

• Germany has 41.2 million players, or roughly 6 in 10 residents aged 6 to 69.

• The average player in the country is 38.3 years old. Last year’s report put that figure at 39.5. 79% of players are over 18, and the largest age group is people over 60, who account for 18% of all players.

• Male and female gamers in Germany are almost evenly split: 54% against 46%.

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• 23.7 million people play on smartphones, the most widely used platform in Germany. Consoles have 22.1 million players, PCs and laptops 14 million, and tablets 9.9 million. Around 19 million people play on two or more devices.

• The best-selling new releases of 2025 on PC and console: EA SPORTS FC 26, Battlefield 6, and Mario Kart World. In mobile downloads, Block Blast!, Vita Mahjong, and Roblox lead.

• Digital copies accounted for 69% of all game purchases in the country, slightly up from 68% a year earlier. On PC, digital is almost the only option (99%), while on console, only 42% of purchases are digital.

• Players aged 20-29 buy digital copies most often (82%), while those aged 40 to 59 buy them least often (60%).

The market

• The German games market grew 4% in 2025, to €9.382 billion. Germany remains Europe's largest market and the world's fifth-largest.

• Revenue from game sales and in-game purchases declined 1%, to €4.948 billion. The growth came from hardware sales (€3.403 billion, +12%) and online gaming services (€1.031 billion, +7%). Game sales fell 13%, to €807 million.

• Mobile games earned €2.671 billion in the country (+3% YoY), and 97% of that came from in-app purchases.

• Players spent €1.847 billion on consoles and €1.465 billion on PC.

• The revenue mix differs a lot by platform. On console, 40% of revenue comes from online gaming services, with another 30% each from game sales and in-game purchases. On PC, 57% of revenue comes from in-game purchases.

• Online gaming services have grown steadily for several years now, and the segment reached €1.031 billion in 2025.

• On hardware, growth in 2025 came from game consoles (+26% YoY, €1.021 billion), gaming accessories (+13% YoY, €1.371 billion), and gaming PCs (+7% YoY, €651 million).

• H1’26, however, closed down in Germany: €4.2 billion (-3% YoY). Game sales were €2.3 billion (-1%), hardware €1.3 billion (-8%), and online gaming services €556 million (+3%).

The industry

• As of 2026, Germany has 956 game companies (+4% YoY). Of those, 474 develop only games (+6%), 427 develop and publish (+3%), and 55 publish only (+2%). The number of companies in the country fell last year for the first time since 2020, but in 2026 it started growing again.

• Headcount at developers and publishers, by contrast, is down: 12,235 people against 12,659 in 2025 (-3% YoY). Overall, the games industry supports more than 30,000 jobs in the country, including education, media, the public sector, and retail.

• The largest employers in the German industry: Nintendo of Europe (965 people), Ubisoft (615), and Stillfront (442). Next come InnoGames (350) and Crytek (340).

• Out of every €100 spent on games in Germany, only €5.50 goes to German companies.

• State funding for games rose to €88 million in 2025, and from 2026 it will be €125 million a year. Before that, the program was frozen several times, and applications for projects longer than a year were not possible.

• There is also a separate program, Press Start: Games Founding Grant. All 132 of its participants went on to register a company, and 75 new studios appeared in the country in total.

• Regional funds hand out noticeably less. North Rhine-Westphalia gives the most (€3.5 million), followed by Berlin and Brandenburg (€2.5 million) and Bavaria (€2.5 million).

• Sentiment, meanwhile, is improving. 29% of German companies expect the industry to develop in 2026, up from 17% a year ago. 31% take a negative view of the industry, against 45% a year earlier. Respondents worry less about their own business: 53% expect a good year and only 12% a bad one.

• That said, 32% of companies plan to hire, exactly the same share as a year ago.

• The main German Computer Game Awards 2026 prize went to The Darkest Files by Paintbucket Games, a game about a prosecutor bringing Nazi criminals to trial. Across 15 categories, 800,000 euros in prize money was handed out.

gamescom

• gamescom 2025 drew 357,000 visitors from 128 countries and 1,568 exhibitors from 72 countries, across 233,000 square meters. Each figure is a record.

• More than 34,000 trade visitors attended. The strongest growth came from the US, China, Canada, and Japan.

• Opening Night Live was watched 91 million times (+50% YoY). All gamescom video formats together drew more than 1.1 billion views (+101% YoY).

• devcom, renamed gamescom dev in October 2025, gathered 5,400 participants from 89 countries and representatives of more than 2,500 companies.

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• The satellite events are growing too. gamescom latam in São Paulo drew 154,000 people (+17.5% YoY), and gamescom asia x Thailand Game Show in Bangkok more than 200,000.

• For gamescom 2026, the association published a survey on how games are perceived in Germany. 85% of respondents believe games strengthen a sense of community, 83% that they build tolerance, and 77% that they help develop democratic thinking.

• 17 million people in Germany play indie games. 82% of players say they admire what small teams do. What they value most in indies is creative gameplay (73%), story (68%), and visual style (65%).

Ratings

• Since 1994, the USK has issued more than 58,000 age ratings. In 2025, 17.1% of games were approved with no age restrictions, 16.1% got a 6+ rating, 36.7% a 12+, 19.8% a 16+, and 10% an 18+.

• In almost 30% of the games it reviewed, the USK found usage risks: chat functions, in-game purchases, and gambling-like mechanics. In roughly a third of those cases, it raised the age rating.

Source

In case you haven’t seen it, I'm sharing a 26-minute look at what will paralyze work at gaming companies worldwide for days after it releases. Of course, I’m speaking of GTA VI.

If you want to watch it in slightly better quality (if you haven’t yet!), you can find the video on the Rockstar website. It’s less compressed.

At the end, Apollo of video games should be watched in the best possible quality to fully embrace the beauty!

Read more

Reports of the week:

1. CYGMA: The Cyprus Video Game Industry in 2025

2. Newzoo: The Gaming Market in 2026

3. Games and Numbers (August 12 — August 25, 2026)

4. Bain & Company: The Gaming Industry in 2026

CYGMA: The Cyprus Video Game Industry in 2025

This is the first industry report from the Cyprus Game Makers Association. The baseline market figures come from BCG, cross-checked against Ampere Analysis, Sensor Tower, Newzoo, and Circana.

The Cyprus mobile market is measured using AppMagic and Sensor Tower data; PC/console is measured using Alinea Analytics and figures from the publishers themselves. The company count comes from the Registrar of Companies and CYGMA’s own database; turnover and GDP contribution come from CYSTAT via C Business Advisors; and InvestGame prepared the deals data.

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The Global Market

• The global games market earned $263.7 billion in 2025 (+4% YoY).

• Mobile games brought in $160.6 billion (61% of the market), PC and console $101.6 billion (38%), and cloud $1.5 billion.

• In mobile, 80% of revenue ($128.7 billion) comes from IAP; the remaining $31.9 billion comes from advertising.

• On PC and console, the structure is different: game and content sales are $69.6 billion (69%), hardware $18.3 billion (18%), and subscriptions $13.7 billion (13%).

The Cyprus Market

• In 2025, 415 games companies operated in Cyprus, with combined revenue of more than €3.2 billion.

• With a population of just over a million, it ranks first in the world for companies, revenue, and mobile downloads per capita.

• For comparison, Finland has 48 games companies per million people, Spain 17, and Serbia 15. On revenue per person, the gap is even wider: €3,200 for Cyprus against €509 for Finland, €51 for Spain, and €32 for Serbia.

• Over the five years (2019 - 2024), the sector’s contribution to national GDP grew from ~€300 million to €1.15 billion - from 1.3% to 3.3% of GDP.

• Mobile games remain the main engine. In 2025, Cyprus studios released 571 new mobile titles; those titles were downloaded 615 million times, and the island’s total mobile revenue was ~€1.8 billion.

• Only 4% of that revenue (~€66 million) came from 2025 releases. Older projects generated the other €1.72 billion.

• On PC and console, 36 new games shipped and around 1.5 million copies were sold. Total gross revenue for the segment was ~€1.4 billion, but only 14% of that (around €200 million) went through Steam. The other €1.21 billion came from multiplayer games running their own client (like World of Tanks) and from D2C.

• Cyprus ranks third in the world for mobile downloads, behind only China and Vietnam. For mobile IAP revenue, it ranks eleventh, between Finland and Hong Kong.

• The global mobile D2C market in 2025 is estimated at around €15 billion, roughly 15% of everything spent inside mobile games.

Companies and Teams

• The number of registered games companies grew from 169 in 2019 to 393 in 2024 (+133%). Over the same period, the number of people employed in the games industry grew from 1,438 to 4,320 (+200%).

• Growth peaked in 2022: headcount rose 43% that year, and the company count rose 24.3%. By 2024, the pace was more modest, at +8.3% companies and +6% people.

• According to CYGMA’s own database, 415 companies were based in Cyprus in 2025.

• By platform, 82.7% of Cyprus studios build mobile games, 33.4% PC, 19.2% console, and 11.2% web.

• At the same time, 57.5% of companies work only on mobile games, while 30.1% work on two or more platforms.

• Teams at Cyprus companies are mostly small. 41% of companies have between 11 and 50 people, and another 30% have between two and ten. Only 6% have more than 200 staff.

• For comparison, all of Europe has around 6,000 studios and publishers, and that number is growing at roughly 4% a year. The Cyprus industry is growing faster, at about 18% a year.

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Investment, M&A, and UA Financing

Friends at InvestGame prepared the data for this section.

• Between 2020 and 2025, Cyprus companies took part in M&A deals worth €2.76 billion across 21 exits (20 M&A and one IPO).

• Over the same period, companies raised €137 million across 72 rounds at various stages.

• Early-stage deals (pre-seed and seed) accounted for €92.7 million (0.7% of the global total) across 69 rounds (2.5% of the global total).

• Globally, that is 4.4% of all games M&A deals above $10 million, but only 1.5% of their value. There are plenty of deals, but most of them are small.

• The largest deals: Miniclip’s purchase of Easybrain for €1.06 billion in 2025, the sale of Outfit7 to the United Luck consortium for €885 million in 2017, and the MY.GAMES reorganization at €568 million in 2022.

• The largest round in six years is Strikerz’s €35.4 million in 2023. There have been only three Series B or later rounds in that whole time.

• UA financing, by contrast, took off. In 2025, Cyprus studios received €128.3 million across five deals - almost as much as was raised through investment rounds over six years.

• Of that, €88.5 million went to Malpa Games, and PvX Partners led all five deals.

Tax Incentives

• The IP Box exempts 80% of profit from game IP from tax. With the corporate tax rate at 15% from 1 January 2026, the effective rate is around 3%.

• The R&D super-deduction allows 120% of development spend to be written off, meaning that for every €100,000 of development spend a company pays €3,000 less tax. Separately, employees earning more than €55,000 a year get a 50% income tax exemption for 17 years. The IP Box and the R&D super-deduction cannot be combined.

Source

Newzoo: The Gaming Market in 2026

Newzoo’s market revenue represents consumer spending on gaming software and services, including full-game purchases, in-game spending, and console subscription services. It excludes taxes, second-hand trade, advertising, hardware, peripherals, B2B services, and gambling.

The market

• According to the current forecast, the gaming market will grow to $213.9 billion in 2026 (+6.1% YoY). All three platforms and every major region are growing.

• Mobile games remain the industry's largest segment. In 2026, they should earn $121.1 billion (+6.8% YoY). For the first time in a long while, mobile revenue leads the growth. Key drivers include deeper monetization of existing players, Chinese publishers expanding abroad, and the development of D2C channels. Downloads, meanwhile, keep declining.

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• Console segment revenue, per Newzoo’s expectations, will be $46.9 billion (+5.1% YoY). The main driver is the November release of Grand Theft Auto VI, which should lift full-game sales revenue by 17.5%. That said, if the game is delayed, there will be no growth, and the segment will most likely close the year down.

• The PC market will grow to $45.9 billion (+5.3% YoY). For comparison, the PC segment grew 12% in 2025: the highest annual rate in Newzoo’s entire history of observations. Microtransactions are expected to gain share in the revenue mix. Analysts expect China to drive most PC growth.

• Asia-Pacific, per the forecast, will account for $100.7 billion in revenue (+6% YoY), or 47% of the entire market. North America’s revenue will be $56.9 billion (+5.4% YoY), and Europe’s $38.5 billion (+6.1% YoY).

• The Middle East and Africa are growing fastest, at $8.5 billion (+10.3% YoY). Latin America will grow 7.9% in 2026, with the region’s revenue reaching $9.3 billion. Together, though, these two regions account for only 8% of the global market.

• China and the US will account for 52% of all consumer spending on games in 2026.

Players

• In 2026, there should be 3.7 billion players worldwide (+4.4% YoY). By 2029, that number should grow to 4.07 billion, at a 3.2% compound annual growth rate.

• 3.1 billion people play mobile games, which is 84% of all players. 977 million people play on PC (26%), and 651 million on consoles (18%).

• Game penetration among the online audience will rise from 61.5% to 62.0%. Industry growth largely comes from the growth in internet users: their number will rise to 5.97 billion (+3.5% YoY).

• Newzoo notes that market growth from new users is limited. The work will have to happen within the existing audience base.

• APAC is the largest region by audience (1.94 billion players; +4% YoY). Next are MEA (640 million; +7.9% YoY) and Europe (475 million; +2.7% YoY).

• Latin America has 394 million players (+4.7% YoY), and North America has 251 million (+1.5% YoY).

❗️North America grows the slowest of all regions by audience, but the region’s revenue is $56.9 billion: roughly $227 per player per year. In MENA, with 640 million players, it comes out to about $13 per person. The region is growing fast in both money and people, but the gap in absolute numbers is enormous.

Source

Games and Numbers (August 12 — August 25, 2026)

PC/Console games

• Meccha Chameleon sold 20 million copies in two months. It’s one of the most successful releases on Steam this year.

• ARC Raiders by Embark Studios and Nexon has sold 16.3 million copies. The game brought in $114.9 million in the second quarter and sold an additional 800,000 units, bringing its total to around $551 million since its October 2025 launch.

• Pokémon Pokopia by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company sold over 5 million copies in just over four months. Roughly one in five Nintendo Switch 2 owners has a copy of the exclusive - 23.68 million consoles had been sold as of the end of June.

• GTA VI pre-orders have reached 4.55 million units and $446 million in revenue. Per Sensor Tower, 77% of pre-orders came from PS5, and nearly 90% of buyers are taking the $100 Ultimate Edition.

• 007 First Light by IO Interactive and Amazon MGM Studios sold 4 million copies in its first three months. It ranks among the fastest-selling releases of 2026. The Nintendo Switch 2 version arrives later this summer.

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• Big Walk by House House and Panic passed 1 million copies sold in under a week. The studio’s previous game, Untitled Goose Game, took three months to get there. That figure excludes free copies from PS Plus.

• Machine Party by Mike Klubnika and GDeavid sold more than 1 million copies in two weeks. The collection of co-op survival mini-games, published by Oro Interactive, is selling at the same pace as the author’s previous hit Buckshot Roulette, which reached 2 million copies in three months.

• ReStory sold over 300 thousand copies in the week after release. The retro electronics repair sim recouped its costs in the first 12 hours, and by August 10 gross revenue had reached $3 million.

• The premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day helped Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sell another 316 thousand copies. Daily players topped 1 million for the first time since October 2023, and the PlayStation sales rate climbed from 6.3 thousand to 15 thousand copies a day. Over three years, the game has sold 18.2 million copies and generated $1.2 billion.

• A free giveaway brought over 7 million new players to Moonlighter in five days. That matches the entire player base the game by Digital Sun and 11 bit Studios built in its first seven years. Peak concurrents hit 14.2 thousand. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault launches on September 2, 2026.

• The Rogue Prince of Persia has passed 1 million players. The game entered early access in May 2024.

• Arco has broken even after selling more than 100,000 copies. It took the Mesoamerican fantasy tactical RPG, published by Panic, two years to reach that mark. Most sales came through Steam, with a notable share of players on Steam Deck.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has already made almost $6 million from Steam pre-orders. The Infinity Ward title has collected 105,000 pre-orders and 61,000 wishlists, a fifth of which come from China. It launches on October 23, 2026.

• Control Resonant by Remedy has collected over 1.5 million wishlists. The game ranked top-3 in PlayStation pre-orders in the US, Germany, and Brazil, while Alan Wake 2 has finally reached 3 million copies sold.

• Onimusha: Way of the Sword has reached 2 million wishlists. Capcom’s first new entry in the series in 20 years sits 19th among Steam’s most anticipated games and launches on September 4, 2026.

• Exodus has been wishlisted more than 500 thousand times. The sci-fi action RPG by Archetype Entertainment arrives in early 2027.

Bain & Company: The Gaming Industry in 2026

Player behavior data was collected in June 2026; the company ran the survey itself. It covered 5,339 gamers worldwide: in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia.

The market

The market estimate is built on data from IDC, PwC, Omdia, and S&P Capital IQ. The forecast is as of December 2025 and excludes hardware sales, advertising revenue, and esports.

• Gaming software revenue was $202 billion in 2025. Over the past four years, by the company’s estimates, the market grew about 3% annually, and Bain & Company assumes the same pace for the next four: by 2029, industry revenue should reach $232 billion.

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• In 2026, the forecast puts the market at $209 billion. For comparison, Newzoo expects the market to reach $213.9 billion this year, with 6.1% growth. On growth rates, the two estimates differ by nearly twice.

• Gaming’s share of total media consumption has plateaued. Analysts write that the industry has already captured most of the audience, and people have no free time left.

Audience and its preferences

• Players like different games. 26% prefer story-driven games from professional studios; 22% like UGC projects and sandboxes; and 15% like competitive multiplayer projects. The market is fragmented.

• Three-quarters of gamers were looking for what to play next at the time of the survey. Most of them, though, don’t plan to go beyond their usual genres.

• Interest in sandboxes and UGC declines sharply with age. Among teens ages 13 to 17, 32% choose them; among people ages 50 to 59, 15%; and among those over 70, 3%.

• By country, sandboxes and UGC are most popular in Brazil (31%), Saudi Arabia (28%), and India (27%). They are least popular in Japan (11%) and the US (16%).

• The most active 20% of players account for 59% of all playing time. The top 20% of spenders bring in 73% of all the money.

• Per the survey, teenagers spend money in games most often: 86% of players ages 13 to 17 spend money on games in a typical month. Among people ages 50 to 59, the share falls to 53%, and among the 60 to 69 audience, to 36%. The relationship isn’t entirely linear, though: players ages 30 to 39 pay more often (81%) than the 18 to 29 audience (77%).

• People who create game content for others spend money twice as often as everyone else.

Focus and AI

• Two-thirds of gamers want roughly the same thing over the next 12 months as they have now: 33% are looking for games similar to their current ones, 19% are waiting for sequels to favorite franchises, and 13% plan to play only what they already play. Only 21% want something fundamentally new.

• Bain & Company reviewed 100 games released since 2023. Among projects with a clear target audience, 83% were commercially successful; among projects without one, 50% were.

• As an example, the analysts point to Baldur’s Gate 3 and Concord: two large bets placed at roughly the same time. The first game sold more than 20 million copies and earned $657 million on Steam in 2023. The second launched into an overheated hero-shooter market and ended in a loud failure.

• As another example of successful focus, Bain & Company points to Jagex. The studio sold off some of the teams it had acquired earlier, cut its project slate, and rebranded as Jagex: The RuneScape Company. The company removed RuneScape’s microtransaction system and focused on long-term growth. It also started working with a portfolio of products inside the universe: RuneScape: Dragonwilds sold more than a million copies in its first year.

• AI, in the analysts’ view, doesn’t fix these problems. It speeds up production, but unfocused studios fail faster.

• 42% of players are more comfortable with the use of AI in games than they were a year ago. 44% did not change their opinion, and only 14% became less comfortable.

• Among teens ages 13 to 17, 59% became more comfortable with AI. In the 70 to 80 group, though, 25% became less comfortable.

Personalization

• Players aren’t against personalized offers. For a personalized discount on a skin the person recently browsed, 56% feel positive about it, and another 33% are neutral. The worst-received offer is one a game sends when an algorithm predicts the player is about to leave: 17% of respondents said they feel uncomfortable at that moment.

• Bain & Company identifies five areas for personalization: the in-game store and offers, lapsed player reengagement, onboarding, in-game content discovery, and cross-promotion between one publisher’s projects.

Distribution and D2C

• Nearly half of gamers purchased currency, items, or content directly on a game’s website at least once in the past 12 months. 27% did so several times, and 20% did so once.

• The share of D2C buyers among mobile players and among PC and console players is roughly the same. Among teens ages 13 to 17, 40% made several direct purchases over the year.

• Three-quarters of the top 50 mobile games by revenue have their own web stores. In 2019, 12% did; in 2024, 44% did.

• Every transaction moved to direct sales gives the publisher an additional 15% to 30% margin.

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• Bain & Company cites a report from GDC and Appcharge, which puts D2C revenue in mobile games at about $17 billion, or roughly 15% of the mobile IAP market. At Modern Times Group and Playtika, the share of direct sales grew from about 25% to 40% of revenue over the year.

• 83% of gamers know that buying directly from a developer is even an option. Among those who have never bought that way, 68% knew about it. The problem with web stores, it seems, isn’t awareness but conversion. Buying in-app is simply more convenient.

• Raising the bonus for a web-store purchase from 10% to 30% has almost no effect on behavior. It moves the share of those who would definitely choose the game’s website by a single percentage point: from 15% to 16%.

• Among those who have already bought several times directly, though, 84% say a personalized offer would raise their chances of making a purchase.

• 84% of users who buy in web shops noted that personalized offers would increase their likelihood of making a purchase. That is 2.5 times more often than among regular players.

• Bain & Company notes that for a midsize developer or publisher, the savings on platform fees pay for building a web store in about a year.

Source

Player behavior data was collected in June 2026; the company ran the survey itself. It covered 5,339 gamers worldwide: in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Brazil, India, and Saudi Arabia.

The market

The market estimate is built on data from IDC, PwC, Omdia, and S&P Capital IQ. The forecast is as of December 2025 and excludes hardware sales, advertising revenue, and esports.

• Gaming software revenue was $202 billion in 2025. Over the past four years, by the company’s estimates, the market grew about 3% annually, and Bain & Company assumes the same pace for the next four: by 2029, industry revenue should reach $232 billion.

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• In 2026, the forecast puts the market at $209 billion. For comparison, Newzoo expects the market to reach $213.9 billion this year, with 6.1% growth. On growth rates, the two estimates differ by nearly twice.

• Gaming’s share of total media consumption has plateaued. Analysts write that the industry has already captured most of the audience, and people have no free time left.

Audience and its preferences

• Players like different games. 26% prefer story-driven games from professional studios; 22% like UGC projects and sandboxes; and 15% like competitive multiplayer projects. The market is fragmented.

• Three-quarters of gamers were looking for what to play next at the time of the survey. Most of them, though, don’t plan to go beyond their usual genres.

• Interest in sandboxes and UGC declines sharply with age. Among teens ages 13 to 17, 32% choose them; among people ages 50 to 59, 15%; and among those over 70, 3%.

• By country, sandboxes and UGC are most popular in Brazil (31%), Saudi Arabia (28%), and India (27%). They are least popular in Japan (11%) and the US (16%).

• The most active 20% of players account for 59% of all playing time. The top 20% of spenders bring in 73% of all the money.

• Per the survey, teenagers spend money in games most often: 86% of players ages 13 to 17 spend money on games in a typical month. Among people ages 50 to 59, the share falls to 53%, and among the 60 to 69 audience, to 36%. The relationship isn’t entirely linear, though: players ages 30 to 39 pay more often (81%) than the 18 to 29 audience (77%).

• People who create game content for others spend money twice as often as everyone else.

Focus and AI

• Two-thirds of gamers want roughly the same thing over the next 12 months as they have now: 33% are looking for games similar to their current ones, 19% are waiting for sequels to favorite franchises, and 13% plan to play only what they already play. Only 21% want something fundamentally new.

• Bain & Company reviewed 100 games released since 2023. Among projects with a clear target audience, 83% were commercially successful; among projects without one, 50% were.

• As an example, the analysts point to Baldur’s Gate 3 and Concord: two large bets placed at roughly the same time. The first game sold more than 20 million copies and earned $657 million on Steam in 2023. The second launched into an overheated hero-shooter market and ended in a loud failure.

• As another example of successful focus, Bain & Company points to Jagex. The studio sold off some of the teams it had acquired earlier, cut its project slate, and rebranded as Jagex: The RuneScape Company. The company removed RuneScape’s microtransaction system and focused on long-term growth. It also started working with a portfolio of products inside the universe: RuneScape: Dragonwilds sold more than a million copies in its first year.

• AI, in the analysts’ view, doesn’t fix these problems. It speeds up production, but unfocused studios fail faster.

• 42% of players are more comfortable with the use of AI in games than they were a year ago. 44% did not change their opinion, and only 14% became less comfortable.

• Among teens ages 13 to 17, 59% became more comfortable with AI. In the 70 to 80 group, though, 25% became less comfortable.

Personalization

• Players aren’t against personalized offers. For a personalized discount on a skin the person recently browsed, 56% feel positive about it, and another 33% are neutral. The worst-received offer is one a game sends when an algorithm predicts the player is about to leave: 17% of respondents said they feel uncomfortable at that moment.

• Bain & Company identifies five areas for personalization: the in-game store and offers, lapsed player reengagement, onboarding, in-game content discovery, and cross-promotion between one publisher’s projects.

Distribution and D2C

• Nearly half of gamers purchased currency, items, or content directly on a game’s website at least once in the past 12 months. 27% did so several times, and 20% did so once.

• The share of D2C buyers among mobile players and among PC and console players is roughly the same. Among teens ages 13 to 17, 40% made several direct purchases over the year.

• Three-quarters of the top 50 mobile games by revenue have their own web stores. In 2019, 12% did; in 2024, 44% did.

• Every transaction moved to direct sales gives the publisher an additional 15% to 30% margin.

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• Bain & Company cites a report from GDC and Appcharge, which puts D2C revenue in mobile games at about $17 billion, or roughly 15% of the mobile IAP market. At Modern Times Group and Playtika, the share of direct sales grew from about 25% to 40% of revenue over the year.

• 83% of gamers know that buying directly from a developer is even an option. Among those who have never bought that way, 68% knew about it. The problem with web stores, it seems, isn’t awareness but conversion. Buying in-app is simply more convenient.

• Raising the bonus for a web-store purchase from 10% to 30% has almost no effect on behavior. It moves the share of those who would definitely choose the game’s website by a single percentage point: from 15% to 16%.

• Among those who have already bought several times directly, though, 84% say a personalized offer would raise their chances of making a purchase.

• 84% of users who buy in web shops noted that personalized offers would increase their likelihood of making a purchase. That is 2.5 times more often than among regular players.

• Bain & Company notes that for a midsize developer or publisher, the savings on platform fees pay for building a web store in about a year.

Source

PC/Console games

• Meccha Chameleon sold 20 million copies in two months. It’s one of the most successful releases on Steam this year.

• ARC Raiders by Embark Studios and Nexon has sold 16.3 million copies. The game brought in $114.9 million in the second quarter and sold an additional 800,000 units, bringing its total to around $551 million since its October 2025 launch.

• Pokémon Pokopia by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company sold over 5 million copies in just over four months. Roughly one in five Nintendo Switch 2 owners has a copy of the exclusive - 23.68 million consoles had been sold as of the end of June.

• GTA VI pre-orders have reached 4.55 million units and $446 million in revenue. Per Sensor Tower, 77% of pre-orders came from PS5, and nearly 90% of buyers are taking the $100 Ultimate Edition.

• 007 First Light by IO Interactive and Amazon MGM Studios sold 4 million copies in its first three months. It ranks among the fastest-selling releases of 2026. The Nintendo Switch 2 version arrives later this summer.

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• Big Walk by House House and Panic passed 1 million copies sold in under a week. The studio’s previous game, Untitled Goose Game, took three months to get there. That figure excludes free copies from PS Plus.

• Machine Party by Mike Klubnika and GDeavid sold more than 1 million copies in two weeks. The collection of co-op survival mini-games, published by Oro Interactive, is selling at the same pace as the author’s previous hit Buckshot Roulette, which reached 2 million copies in three months.

• ReStory sold over 300 thousand copies in the week after release. The retro electronics repair sim recouped its costs in the first 12 hours, and by August 10 gross revenue had reached $3 million.

• The premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day helped Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 sell another 316 thousand copies. Daily players topped 1 million for the first time since October 2023, and the PlayStation sales rate climbed from 6.3 thousand to 15 thousand copies a day. Over three years, the game has sold 18.2 million copies and generated $1.2 billion.

• A free giveaway brought over 7 million new players to Moonlighter in five days. That matches the entire player base the game by Digital Sun and 11 bit Studios built in its first seven years. Peak concurrents hit 14.2 thousand. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault launches on September 2, 2026.

• The Rogue Prince of Persia has passed 1 million players. The game entered early access in May 2024.

• Arco has broken even after selling more than 100,000 copies. It took the Mesoamerican fantasy tactical RPG, published by Panic, two years to reach that mark. Most sales came through Steam, with a notable share of players on Steam Deck.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has already made almost $6 million from Steam pre-orders. The Infinity Ward title has collected 105,000 pre-orders and 61,000 wishlists, a fifth of which come from China. It launches on October 23, 2026.

• Control Resonant by Remedy has collected over 1.5 million wishlists. The game ranked top-3 in PlayStation pre-orders in the US, Germany, and Brazil, while Alan Wake 2 has finally reached 3 million copies sold.

• Onimusha: Way of the Sword has reached 2 million wishlists. Capcom’s first new entry in the series in 20 years sits 19th among Steam’s most anticipated games and launches on September 4, 2026.

• Exodus has been wishlisted more than 500 thousand times. The sci-fi action RPG by Archetype Entertainment arrives in early 2027.

Newzoo’s market revenue represents consumer spending on gaming software and services, including full-game purchases, in-game spending, and console subscription services. It excludes taxes, second-hand trade, advertising, hardware, peripherals, B2B services, and gambling.

The market

• According to the current forecast, the gaming market will grow to $213.9 billion in 2026 (+6.1% YoY). All three platforms and every major region are growing.

• Mobile games remain the industry's largest segment. In 2026, they should earn $121.1 billion (+6.8% YoY). For the first time in a long while, mobile revenue leads the growth. Key drivers include deeper monetization of existing players, Chinese publishers expanding abroad, and the development of D2C channels. Downloads, meanwhile, keep declining.

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• Console segment revenue, per Newzoo’s expectations, will be $46.9 billion (+5.1% YoY). The main driver is the November release of Grand Theft Auto VI, which should lift full-game sales revenue by 17.5%. That said, if the game is delayed, there will be no growth, and the segment will most likely close the year down.

• The PC market will grow to $45.9 billion (+5.3% YoY). For comparison, the PC segment grew 12% in 2025: the highest annual rate in Newzoo’s entire history of observations. Microtransactions are expected to gain share in the revenue mix. Analysts expect China to drive most PC growth.

• Asia-Pacific, per the forecast, will account for $100.7 billion in revenue (+6% YoY), or 47% of the entire market. North America’s revenue will be $56.9 billion (+5.4% YoY), and Europe’s $38.5 billion (+6.1% YoY).

• The Middle East and Africa are growing fastest, at $8.5 billion (+10.3% YoY). Latin America will grow 7.9% in 2026, with the region’s revenue reaching $9.3 billion. Together, though, these two regions account for only 8% of the global market.

• China and the US will account for 52% of all consumer spending on games in 2026.

Players

• In 2026, there should be 3.7 billion players worldwide (+4.4% YoY). By 2029, that number should grow to 4.07 billion, at a 3.2% compound annual growth rate.

• 3.1 billion people play mobile games, which is 84% of all players. 977 million people play on PC (26%), and 651 million on consoles (18%).

• Game penetration among the online audience will rise from 61.5% to 62.0%. Industry growth largely comes from the growth in internet users: their number will rise to 5.97 billion (+3.5% YoY).

• Newzoo notes that market growth from new users is limited. The work will have to happen within the existing audience base.

• APAC is the largest region by audience (1.94 billion players; +4% YoY). Next are MEA (640 million; +7.9% YoY) and Europe (475 million; +2.7% YoY).

• Latin America has 394 million players (+4.7% YoY), and North America has 251 million (+1.5% YoY).

❗️North America grows the slowest of all regions by audience, but the region’s revenue is $56.9 billion: roughly $227 per player per year. In MENA, with 640 million players, it comes out to about $13 per person. The region is growing fast in both money and people, but the gap in absolute numbers is enormous.

Source

This is the first industry report from the Cyprus Game Makers Association. The baseline market figures come from BCG, cross-checked against Ampere Analysis, Sensor Tower, Newzoo, and Circana.

The Cyprus mobile market is measured using AppMagic and Sensor Tower data; PC/console is measured using Alinea Analytics and figures from the publishers themselves. The company count comes from the Registrar of Companies and CYGMA’s own database; turnover and GDP contribution come from CYSTAT via C Business Advisors; and InvestGame prepared the deals data.

From concept art to launch-day marketing, most game studios rely on contractors in multiple countries. Mellow makes it simple to hire, pay, and stay compliant with talent in 150+ countries — no legal entity required.

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The Global Market

• The global games market earned $263.7 billion in 2025 (+4% YoY).

• Mobile games brought in $160.6 billion (61% of the market), PC and console $101.6 billion (38%), and cloud $1.5 billion.

• In mobile, 80% of revenue ($128.7 billion) comes from IAP; the remaining $31.9 billion comes from advertising.

• On PC and console, the structure is different: game and content sales are $69.6 billion (69%), hardware $18.3 billion (18%), and subscriptions $13.7 billion (13%).

The Cyprus Market

• In 2025, 415 games companies operated in Cyprus, with combined revenue of more than €3.2 billion.

• With a population of just over a million, it ranks first in the world for companies, revenue, and mobile downloads per capita.

• For comparison, Finland has 48 games companies per million people, Spain 17, and Serbia 15. On revenue per person, the gap is even wider: €3,200 for Cyprus against €509 for Finland, €51 for Spain, and €32 for Serbia.

• Over the five years (2019 - 2024), the sector’s contribution to national GDP grew from ~€300 million to €1.15 billion - from 1.3% to 3.3% of GDP.

• Mobile games remain the main engine. In 2025, Cyprus studios released 571 new mobile titles; those titles were downloaded 615 million times, and the island’s total mobile revenue was ~€1.8 billion.

• Only 4% of that revenue (~€66 million) came from 2025 releases. Older projects generated the other €1.72 billion.

• On PC and console, 36 new games shipped and around 1.5 million copies were sold. Total gross revenue for the segment was ~€1.4 billion, but only 14% of that (around €200 million) went through Steam. The other €1.21 billion came from multiplayer games running their own client (like World of Tanks) and from D2C.

• Cyprus ranks third in the world for mobile downloads, behind only China and Vietnam. For mobile IAP revenue, it ranks eleventh, between Finland and Hong Kong.

• The global mobile D2C market in 2025 is estimated at around €15 billion, roughly 15% of everything spent inside mobile games.

Companies and Teams

• The number of registered games companies grew from 169 in 2019 to 393 in 2024 (+133%). Over the same period, the number of people employed in the games industry grew from 1,438 to 4,320 (+200%).

• Growth peaked in 2022: headcount rose 43% that year, and the company count rose 24.3%. By 2024, the pace was more modest, at +8.3% companies and +6% people.

• According to CYGMA’s own database, 415 companies were based in Cyprus in 2025.

• By platform, 82.7% of Cyprus studios build mobile games, 33.4% PC, 19.2% console, and 11.2% web.

• At the same time, 57.5% of companies work only on mobile games, while 30.1% work on two or more platforms.

• Teams at Cyprus companies are mostly small. 41% of companies have between 11 and 50 people, and another 30% have between two and ten. Only 6% have more than 200 staff.

• For comparison, all of Europe has around 6,000 studios and publishers, and that number is growing at roughly 4% a year. The Cyprus industry is growing faster, at about 18% a year.

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Investment, M&A, and UA Financing

Friends at InvestGame prepared the data for this section.

• Between 2020 and 2025, Cyprus companies took part in M&A deals worth €2.76 billion across 21 exits (20 M&A and one IPO).

• Over the same period, companies raised €137 million across 72 rounds at various stages.

• Early-stage deals (pre-seed and seed) accounted for €92.7 million (0.7% of the global total) across 69 rounds (2.5% of the global total).

• Globally, that is 4.4% of all games M&A deals above $10 million, but only 1.5% of their value. There are plenty of deals, but most of them are small.

• The largest deals: Miniclip’s purchase of Easybrain for €1.06 billion in 2025, the sale of Outfit7 to the United Luck consortium for €885 million in 2017, and the MY.GAMES reorganization at €568 million in 2022.

• The largest round in six years is Strikerz’s €35.4 million in 2023. There have been only three Series B or later rounds in that whole time.

• UA financing, by contrast, took off. In 2025, Cyprus studios received €128.3 million across five deals - almost as much as was raised through investment rounds over six years.

• Of that, €88.5 million went to Malpa Games, and PvX Partners led all five deals.

Tax Incentives

• The IP Box exempts 80% of profit from game IP from tax. With the corporate tax rate at 15% from 1 January 2026, the effective rate is around 3%.

• The R&D super-deduction allows 120% of development spend to be written off, meaning that for every €100,000 of development spend a company pays €3,000 less tax. Separately, employees earning more than €55,000 a year get a 50% income tax exemption for 17 years. The IP Box and the R&D super-deduction cannot be combined.

Source

Gamescom’26 starts next week. The industry is gathering together again. While industry sentiment isn't great, event organizers announced it will be the largest event ever. Maybe things are not that bad after all? Or it’s the fiddle while Rome burns?

GameDev Reports MCP Connector

I’ve been working on the MCP connector for the last couple of months, and it will use my archive of thousands of industry publications to make it easier for you guys to find gaming industry numbers. Modern workflows are changing (mine too), and I guess it will be helpful for people.

It’s already working, but I’m tweaking the answer structure, source weighting, and teaching the model to always show sources. Here's how it looks in action.

With this connector, I'll launch the GameDev Reports Member Area. It’ll be a place where paid supporters can access all the benefits.

All paid subscribers will have access to the MCP Connector at no extra cost. I’m planning to release it as an alpha for existing subscribers in late September.

Read more

Reports of the week:

1. Sensor Tower: The Gaming Market in H1'26

2. Niko Partners: India’s Gaming Market in 2026

3. CADPA: The Chinese Gaming Market in H1’26

4. Amir Satvat: Layoffs in the Gaming Industry in 2026

5. Circana: The U.S. Video Game Market in July 2026

Sensor Tower: The Gaming Market in H1'26

All numbers are collected until June 30, 2026.

Mobile Market

IAP revenue is gross (before store commission); it includes paid downloads, in-app purchases, and subscriptions. Ad revenue and third-party purchases are not counted. Downloads are counted once per Apple or Google account.

Sensor Tower doesn’t count D2C revenue, third-party store revenue, or Android revenue in China.

• Mobile games earned $40 billion in IAP revenue (-2.0% YoY). By IAP revenue, the hybrid casual segment is growing, and casual projects are holding steady. But the mid-core genre is losing revenue.

• Downloads fell to 24 billion (-11.9% YoY), and total playtime was 221 billion hours (the same as in the first half of 2025).

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• Hypercasual games lost the most downloads.

• People played casual projects less (in hours) and spent more time in mid-core projects. That didn’t translate into revenue growth, though. The games people spend the most time in are Roblox (which Sensor Tower classifies as mid-core), Garena Free Fire and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.

• The US is the largest mobile market by IAP revenue ($12.1 billion; -7% YoY), China is second ($6.46 billion - but without the Android market. In reality China is most likely ahead of the US), with Japan ($4.94 billion; -10% YoY) and South Korea ($2.32 billion; -10% YoY) behind them.

• Europe is the only region growing in IAP revenue. On average, it grew 10%, with Germany (+7%), the UK (+10%) and France (+8%) as the main drivers.

• India leads in downloads (3.78 billion installs), Indonesia and India lead in time spent, and Asia accounts for roughly half of all hours mobile users spend in games.

• Downloads fell in every large region. Africa held up best (-2%), while several large European and Southeast Asian markets lost close to 20%.

• By IAP revenue, Strategy is the largest genre. In H1’26, it earned $9.27 billion; Puzzle was second at $8.07 billion, and RPG third at $6.12 billion.

• At the same time, Strategy has only a billion installs in H1’26. For comparison, Puzzle has 5.07 billion, Simulation 4.57 billion, Arcade 4.52 billion.

• On hours spent, Simulation leads (44.14 billion hours), followed by Puzzle (39.33), Strategy (33.37), and Shooter (32.69).

• Downloads fell by roughly 12% across every genre, but Puzzle IAP revenue grew almost 20% while Strategy fell about 5%. So the revenue gap narrowed from $3 billion to $1.2 billion over the year.

• Almost the entire absolute revenue gain came from Puzzle: +$353 million in the US, +$89.2 million in Germany, +$80.2 million in Japan, +$76.3 million in the UK, +$63.5 million in Korea, +$53.3 million in China. Puzzle grew by roughly $1.3 billion compared with H1’25 revenue. That’s about 70% of the entire absolute revenue gain in the market.

• The biggest growth outside Puzzle came from the Shooter category in China (+$364 million), largely thanks to Delta Force. The steepest IAP revenue drops were Casino in the US (-$648 million), RPG in Korea (-$297 million), and RPG in Japan (-$229 million).

• By downloads, the only large gain is Strategy in India (+36.5 million installs). Everything else is either flat or falling.

• People in the US started playing simulation games more - by 0.6 billion hours; in India they play far less shooter and casino; and action in Russia grew by 1.3 billion hours. Sensor Tower writes that this happened against the backdrop of Brawl Stars’ comeback, but I couldn’t find confirmation of that.

• 4X Strategy revenue has been falling for a second straight quarter after peaking at $3.09 billion in Q4’25.

• Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival together earned $370 million less in H1’26 than a year earlier. Kingshot (+461%, to $700 million) and Last Z: Survival Shooter (+328%, to $359 million) came along to replace them.

• The Match Merge 2 genre nearly doubled - to $1.91 billion - and moved into third place among puzzle sub-genres. The main driver is Gossip Harbor (+135%).

• Match Swap is on a plateau ($1.81 billion in Q2’26).

• Coin Looters keeps losing revenue on the back of MONOPOLY GO!’s decline (-18%), but Sensor Tower ties that to D2C. The same goes for the revenue drop in slots, as companies try to pull their biggest spenders onto their own channels.

• The whole RPG genre is going through a rough time. The MMORPG decline is especially pronounced.

• Sensor Tower also included a breakdown of how different types of users play different genres. In the UK, for example, sports fans are 6.8 times more likely than the average user to play sports games. And in the US, parents are, for some reason, 4.4 times more likely to play racing games. I'm not sure what to do with this information yet.

Competitive Landscape

• Leaders by IAP revenue: Honor of Kings ($1.078 billion), Last War: Survival ($977 million), Whiteout Survival ($918 million).

• Honor of Kings took back first place despite a 2% YoY decline in money terms. Last War and Whiteout Survival each fell roughly 16%. Gossip Harbor and Kingshot broke into the top 10 with triple-digit growth, pushing out Roblox and Pokémon TCG Pocket.

• Leaders by downloads: Block Blast! (175.4 million), Free Fire (153.6 million), Roblox (150.8 million).

• By average MAU, Roblox is ahead of everyone in the world (440.3 million), Free Fire is second (268.5 million), and Block Blast! third (252.5 million). None of the audience leaders made the top 10 by revenue, except Candy Crush Saga.

• Tencent is the world's largest mobile games company. It has $5.03 billion in IAP revenue and 934 million downloads in H1’26. Century Games moved into second place with $1.93 billion in IAP revenue (+45% YoY) and 119 million downloads. Over the year, it narrowed Tencent’s lead from 3.7x to 2.6x.

• Eight publishers cleared the billion mark for the half, including Scopely ($1.53 billion), Microsoft ($1.36 billion), Dream Games ($1.23 billion), Playrix ($1.18 billion), Microfun ($1.06 billion), and Take-Two ($1.04 billion).

• The main breakouts of H1’26 are Microfun and Omnilojo ($494 million), both of which doubled IAP revenue and moved into the top 10 and top 20, respectively. Omnilojo, though, has already fallen off its H2’25 revenue peak.

• The most notable declines are Roblox (-29%, $403 million in IAP revenue on 143 million downloads) and miHoYo (-24%, $544 million). Both are explained by heavy use of D2C tools.

• Arrow puzzles were one of the biggest download drivers of H1’26, and the balance of power inside the genre shifted twice. Arrows held the lead through winter and spring with a peak of 7.61 million downloads in the week of May 11; Amaze GO! launched in mid-February and reached 5.68 million in the week of May 4, and Arrow Puzzle grew steadily all period and overtook both by early July (4.24 million against 3.01 and 3.23 million).

• Sensor Tower broke down the ad placements in all three. Non-rewarded interstitials after a level are there in all of them, but Arrow Puzzle unlocks its rewarded offers noticeably earlier: restoring a life from level 1-2 versus level 4 in Arrows and level 15 in Amaze GO!. On top of that, on iOS Arrow Puzzle has separate placements for coins, the eraser, Grid Guide, Magic Wand, and double rewards - the game simply has more ad placements.

• Top teams make tens of thousands of ad creatives in half a year. The leaders are MONOPOLY GO! (49,300), Pokémon GO (33,700) and Candy Crush Saga (26,300).

• Pokémon GO, Candy Crush Saga, Royal Match and Gossip Harbor were also among the creative-count leaders in H1’25. Many people note that creatives (and their volume) are a major success factor in today’s market.

• By share of ad impressions within the top 100 in H1’26, the leaders were Gossip Harbor, Pokémon GO, and Kingshot. Even though they made fewer creatives than MONOPOLY GO!.

• Marketing mixes differ across the board: Gossip Harbor and Pixel Flow! are almost entirely on AppLovin (56.8% and 60% of impressions). Pokémon GO, by contrast, is diversified: AdMob has 25.4%, AppLovin 19.1%, Vungle 14%, and Unity 11.7%. Kingshot started using AppLovin more, and MONOPOLY GO! went the other way, toward Meta.

• In terms of traffic sources, everything rests on paid acquisition. But some projects (MONOPOLY GO!, for example) have an organic share of 42.6%.

• 8 of the 13 events in non-sports games built around the FIFA World Cup in the US used a match-betting mechanic.

• Sports games themselves grew 7% YoY in IAP revenue on the back of the football festivities (the market, as a reminder, fell 2%), though downloads still fell 8% (against 12% market-wide).

• Roblox leads in install base (746 million devices in June 2026), but Block Blast! is right behind (622 million devices).

• Block Blast!’s average MAU grew 68% YoY on download growth of just 11%; Roblox’s MAU added 18% with no significant install growth. Brawl Stars’ downloads grew 35%.

• Retention for the January 2026 cohort in Royal Match is the envy of everyone - D1 60.9%, D7 31.5%, D30 17.8%, D180 6.8%. Block Blast! has the best D180 in the sample (7.93%) and the best D7 (33.4%).

• Whiteout Survival - D1 42.7% / D7 14.1% / D30 5.57% / D180 1.48%; Last War - D1 39.8% / D7 11.1% / D30 3.82% / D180 0.99%; Honor of Kings - D1 35% / D7 17.3% / D30 7.4% / D180 2.87%.

• It’s interesting how weak MONOPOLY GO!’s D1 Retention is (22.6%), while its D180 is good at 1.76%. That is understandable, though, given the project's scale and the high volume of non-targeted traffic.

• Among casual projects, Gossip Harbor (D1 44.7% / D7 20% / D30 10.8% / D180 4.81%) and Candy Crush Saga (D1 39.9% / D7 22.6% / D30 12.5% / D180 4.44%) have good numbers.

• All in Hole leads among hybrid casual projects in D1 retention (56.7%). Pixel Flow!, on the other hand, is more effective than any other project over the medium and long term (D30 12.5%; D180 3.62%).

• Hypercasual projects have good metrics too. Block Blast! stands out here (D1 Retention 53.5%; D7 33.4%; D30 21.7%; D180 7.93%). You can only dream of numbers like that.

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Advertising and Ad Monetization

Pathmatics tracks ad spend and impressions across 41 markets and 18 channels. In-game ad monetization data covers 19 countries.

• Ad revenue dominates in only three large markets: India (70.3%), Indonesia (55.8%), and Brazil (54.7%). Sensor Tower notes that the approach to the product and to running it should be different when entering these markets, since payment behavior differs a lot from T1 markets.

• 54.8% of all ad impressions come from in-app inventory. YouTube is second (16.4% - and it’s the fastest-growing channel in H1’26), Instagram third (11.4%).

• By genre, more than half of all spend goes to Puzzle (33.1%) and Strategy (21%). In Tier-1 Asian countries, more of the spend goes to Strategy.

• By Sensor Tower’s estimates, ad revenue from February through April 2026 breaks down as follows: hypercasual games - $2.02 billion, casual - $2.01 billion, hybridcasual - $827 million, mid-core - $190 million.

• By genre, Puzzle accounts for 53% of ad revenue ($2.65 billion).

• By sub-genre, Block leads with $519 million (10% of all ad revenue, thanks to Block Blast!).

• AppLovin and AdMob accounted for almost 65% of all mobile game ad revenue in May 2026, against 61% in January 2025. AppLovin has 35.6%, AdMob 29.2%.

• The networks that fell the most are Unity Ads (from 6.5% to 3.8%) and Supersonic (from 4.6% to 1.9%).

• AppLovin shows strong results in the hypercasual, hybridcasual, and casual segments. AdMob leads by a wide margin in the mid-core segment (57.8% in May 2026).

• Top advertisers inside mobile games by impressions (January-May 2026): TikTok (6.42 billion), Facebook (5.35 billion), Gossip Harbor (5.35 billion), Arrows Puzzle Escape (4.99 billion), Kingshot (4.93 billion).

• In the US, the largest advertiser is Pixel Flow!, with 2.4 billion impressions - the game outspends both social platforms and e-commerce.

• Top games by ad revenue (January-May 2026): Block Blast! $127 million, Vita Mahjong $89.8 million, Candy Crush Saga $81.1 million.

• Vita Mahjong doubled its ad revenue year over year and overtook Candy Crush Saga. Every casual game in the top 10 earned less over the first 5 months of 2026 than over the same period in 2025. All of the growth is concentrated in hypercasual projects and newcomers like Pixel Flow!.

• Among publishers, Hungry Studio leads with $131 million, 60% of which comes from markets outside the US. Almost all of the studio’s revenue is Block Blast!. On US revenue share, Easybrain (Sudoku.com) leads, followed by Onesoft (Goods Puzzle), with Hungry Studio only third.

• The publisher rankings show that most of the top in T1 countries is taken by companies where IAP revenue overwhelmingly outweighs ad revenue.

PC and Console Market

The PC/console market is estimated using Video Game Insights data. It covers 140,000+ games in 50+ countries on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox. Copies sold include free giveaways through subscriptions (PS Plus, Game Pass).

• Top publishers by copies sold: EA (63.3 million), Ubisoft (43.8 million), Capcom (39.2 million), Sony (37.5 million), Xbox Game Studios (23.6 million). Six of the ten are American, three Japanese, and from Europe there’s only Ubisoft. The ranking includes free copies given away through PS+ and Xbox Game Pass.

• Sensor Tower calculated how dependent different companies are on a single project in 2026. For 2K, NBA 2K26 accounts for 34.4% of all copies; for EA, FC 26 is 27.3%; Warner Bros. 25.6%; Rockstar 23.8%; Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem 22.7%. Ubisoft is in a healthier position - The Crew Motorfest accounts for 7.3% of copies. There’s no serious single-product dependency at Bandai Namco (7.7%), Sony (10.9%) or Xbox Game Studios (13.4%).

• The best-selling game of the half (by copies) is EA SPORTS FC 26 ($70, 16.9 million copies). Second is MECCHA CHAMELEON - 13.1 million copies (though the game costs $6).

• Among F2P projects, Roblox comes first (4 million copies), then Where Winds Meet (3.5 million), skate. (3.2 million) and War Thunder (3.2 million).

• It’s worth noting the density of cheap projects at the top of the chart: MECCHA CHAMELEON, PEAK (3.5 million copies), R.E.P.O. (3.2 million copies), and, at a stretch, Slay the Spire 2 belongs here too (the game priced at $25).

• Action is Steam's most popular genre. It accounted for 107 million copies, 622 releases, and $2.005 billion in revenue from copy sales, which is about 40% of the market.

• RPG is the best genre in terms of monetization. 39 million copies sold brought in $786 million. 197 projects came out in the genre.

• Shooters are bought more often - 52 million copies in H1’26 - but they earn less ($566 million on 134 releases).

• Steam’s revenue growth has stalled for the first time in several years. In H1’26 revenue came to $5.36 billion - 5% less than in H1’25 ($5.65 billion).

• The picture on copies sold is similar.

• At the same time, competition is getting tougher. 11,800 games have already come out in H1’26 - more than in any other half over the last 5 years (and in history, for that matter).

• Game sales on PlayStation fell vs. last year and vs. the previous half. 492 million copies were sold in H1’26. Xbox shows similar dynamics, with 372 million copies sold in H1’26.

• On PlayStation in H1’26, EA SPORTS FC 26 leads by a wide margin - 12.3 million copies; Resident Evil Requiem is second (5.3 million copies) and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 third (4.3 million).

• On Xbox, distribution by copies is smoother: Subnautica 2 leads (3.4 million copies), with NBA 2K26 and EA Sports FC 26 at 3 million each.

• In PC and console game advertising, YouTube leads globally (27.3% of spend), Instagram is second (17.7%) and Facebook third (16.8%).

• By genre, more than half of ad spend goes to RPG (31.3%) and Shooter (25.3%), followed by Simulation (17.1%) and Action (12.5%).

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Browser Games

• Visits to browser game sites grew slightly in H1’26 against last year - to 9.45 billion. Average DAU, meanwhile, is flat at around 52,000.

• All of that (small) growth is concentrated in Asia. European countries, by contrast, are declining.

• The top 3 web game platforms: poki.com (675 million desktop visits and 533 million mobile), itch.io (459 and 679 million), and crazygames.com (606 and 191 million).

• Poki’s global lead rests on Asia - the site has 304 million desktop and 343 million mobile visits there. In Europe and Latin America, itch.io is more popular. Games on Crazy Games are played more often on desktop, while on itch.io - surprisingly - it’s mobile. Poki sits somewhere in the middle.

• Traffic volume doesn’t correlate with engagement. People stay longest on en.boardgamearena.com (23.6 minutes per visit, 2.7 visits a day) and pokemonshowdown.com (21.5 minutes, 2.1 visits) - these are more niche sites. Among the large platforms, crazygames.com holds its audience best (18.2 minutes, 1.7 visits).

• Almost all web platforms run on direct and organic traffic. For poki.com, those channels account for 94.1% of traffic, for crazygames.com 93.3%. I’d guess that’s a very high-margin business.

Source

Niko Partners: India’s Gaming Market in 2026

Player behavior data comes from a survey.

The Market

• India’s gaming market passed the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2025, generating $1.04 billion (+14.8% YoY).

• In 2026, Niko Partners expects the market to grow to ~$1.2 billion, and to $1.77 billion by 2030. The five-year CAGR is 11.2%. That makes India the fastest-growing market Niko Partners tracks.

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• In 2025, the country had 511 million players. In 2026, that number will pass 550 million, and by 2030 analysts expect the country to have more than 700 million gamers.

• India’s ARPU in 2025 was $2.04; by 2030 the metric should rise to $2.52.

The Audience and Its Preferences

• The share of women among players rose from 43% in 2023 to 49% in 2026. Male and female gamers in the country are now split almost evenly.

• In June 2026, games outside the Battle Royale genre accounted for 62.8% of mobile revenue, up from 53.2% in June 2023. Battle Royale still leads the market, but concentration is declining.

• Niko Partners notes that Indian players are spending more time with older PC games.

• Various UGC platforms such as Roblox and Minecraft are also gaining popularity in the country. They are especially popular with younger audiences. Roleplay servers in GTA, which Niko Partners mentions separately as a popular livestreaming format, arguably belong in the same bucket.

• 31.5% of Indian players prefer to buy in-game content outside the usual storefronts: through web shops, third-party stores, and top-up cards.

• 84.6% of players have paid via UPI at least once. Credit cards are used by 31.5% of players, so UPI is the country’s main payment method.

• Indian players’ attitudes toward generative AI have shifted noticeably: they are now more cautious about how both developers and other players use it. Niko Partners links this to the economy and to the conversation around AI’s impact on jobs in the country.

Source

CADPA: The Chinese Gaming Market in H1’26

The report was presented on July 30 at the CDEC conference in Shanghai. This is the official industry data, compiled by the game committee of China’s CADPA association.

All figures in the report are given in yuan. Dollar conversions here and below use a rate of ~6.74 yuan per dollar as of mid-August 2026.

Market

• China’s domestic market in H1’26 was 188.45 billion yuan (~$27.9 billion), +12.17% YoY.

• By June 2026, the country had 684 million players (+0.82% YoY). The audience is growing slowly, so the market’s growth came from higher revenue per user.

• Chinese self-developed games earned 163.36 billion yuan (~$24.2 billion) domestically, up 16.31% YoY. They account for 86.7% of the domestic market, and they are growing noticeably faster than the market overall.

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Exports

• Abroad, Chinese games earned $12.37 billion (+30.22% YoY). Both successful legacy projects and new releases are behind that figure.

• Geographically, the main markets for Chinese mobile games have not changed: the US (32.31% of overseas revenue), Japan (14.05%), and South Korea (7.48%). Together, that is 53.84%.

• Germany, the UK, and France together account for 10.14% of overseas revenue, and their share grew slightly.

• By revenue, among the top 100 Chinese mobile games abroad, Strategy leads with 46.91% of revenue. Merge games are next (16.22%), followed by RPG (9.62%). Shooter is fourth at 8.31%.

• Over the year, merge games added 9.74 percentage points of revenue share.

Platforms

• Mobile games inside China earned 135.21 billion yuan (~$20.1 billion), up 7.9% YoY. That is 71.75% of the domestic market.

• Among the top 100 mobile games by revenue, RPG is the most common genre (22% of the total), followed by Strategy (11%).

• By revenue in that top 100, though, Shooter takes first place: 26.23% of all revenue, and it grew noticeably over the year. MOBA dropped to second (18.96% of all revenue), and RPG is third (14.35%).

• PC client games earned 45.29 billion yuan (~$6.7 billion), up 27.92% YoY. The segment accounts for 24.03% of the market and is the second fastest-growing part of the domestic market after mini games. CADPA attributes the growth to cross-play between PC and mobile versions and strong results from several long-running projects.

• Browser games earned 2.02 billion yuan (~$299 million), down 8.47% YoY. The decline has continued for several years.

• Console games earned 961 million yuan (~$143 million), down 7.06% YoY. The main reason is the absence of hits on the scale of Black Myth: Wukong.

• Games with esports disciplines earned 89.62 billion yuan (~$13.3 billion), up 11.12% YoY.

• Anime games earned 13.27 billion yuan (~$1.97 billion), down 8.97% YoY. Several large projects saw revenue decline, and new releases could not cover the gap.

• Casual mobile games earned 18.21 billion yuan (~$2.7 billion), +10.74% YoY. In-app purchases accounted for 67% of all revenue, and advertising for 33%.

• Mini games earned 31.66 billion yuan (~$4.7 billion), up 36.01% YoY. That is the fastest-growing segment of the Chinese gaming market.

• Within mini games, in-app purchases brought in 21.14 billion yuan (+38.12%), and advertising 10.52 billion yuan (+31.94%). The split barely changed vs. H1’25: 66.8% IAP revenue against 33.2% advertising.

• Board games appear in the report for the first time. The segment earned 3.87 billion yuan (~$574 million) and grew slightly, up 4.03% YoY.

• Digital board games brought in 1.997 billion yuan (51.6% of total revenue), and physical ones brought in 1.87 billion yuan (48.4%).

Source

Amir Satvat: Layoffs in the Gaming Industry in 2026

Amir Satvat runs his own game industry layoff tracker as part of ASGC, his free project that helps people in the gaming industry find work. The data is collected from public sources.

Forecast

• According to the most recent forecast (August 11), 14,666 people will lose their jobs in the gaming industry in 2026. That is 788 more than in the July 10 forecast.

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• Confirmed layoffs as of August 11 stand at 10,140. Amir expects another 4,526 people to lose their jobs over the rest of the year.

• The first version of the forecast, from January 6, projected 8,025 layoffs for the year. Since then, the estimate has grown by almost 83%.

• 2024 remains the record year, with 15,631 layoffs. But 2026 is already ahead of 2022 (8,500), 2023 (10,500), and 2025 (9,197). And there are still two quarters to go. So, unfortunately, 2026 could set a new ugly record.

• Over five years, from 2022 to 2026, Amir Satvat has counted 58,494 layoffs.

Geography and Concentration

• Since the start of 2026, the industry has seen more than 105 layoff events.

• North America accounts for 66% of all layoff events and about 79% of affected people. The US has roughly 48% of all layoffs, and Canada ~17%. Europe accounts for ~30%.

• The five largest reductions in the gaming industry accounted for 56% of all layoffs; the top two alone accounted for around 44%.

• One of those largest rounds is Microsoft. The company cut 1,600 people from its gaming division and warned that it will part with the same number of employees over the next year.

Source

Circana: The U.S. Video Game Market in July 2026

Circana data on the U.S. market. Mobile figures provided by Sensor Tower.

Market

• In July 2026, Americans spent $4.5 billion on games (-10% YoY).

• Content spending was $4.1 billion (-9% YoY). Mobile content sales dropped the most, but console and PC content also declined versus last year.

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• Through the first seven months of 2026, the U.S. market is running 2% behind 2025.

• In July 2026, Americans spent $282 million on hardware (-29% YoY). Circana notes that this is the worst July since 2020 ($163 million).

• In units, hardware sales fell 39% versus July 2025. The average price of a new system rose 16%, to $542. Mat Piscatella notes that rising system prices are weighing on sales. The Nintendo Switch 2 is getting a price increase on September 1.

• Every platform declined in units: PlayStation 5 sales fell 6%, Xbox Series 18%, and Nintendo Switch 2 51%. In dollars, the PlayStation 5 led July; in units sold, the Nintendo Switch 2 came first.

• After 14 months on the market, the Nintendo Switch 2 is running 11% ahead of the original Switch’s sales pace. Circana reported the same gap at the 11-month mark.

• Accessories brought in $178 million in July 2026 (-6% YoY). This is the worst July since 2019 ($144 million). Racing controller spending fell 26%, while cases and organizers grew 36% in dollar sales.

Game Sales

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II was the best-selling game of July in the U.S., thanks to the release of its PS4 and PS5 port. Call of Duty: Black Ops, also re-released on PlayStation, took 5th place on the chart.

• EA Sports College Football 27 was second among new releases by sales.

• Through the first seven months of 2026, the top performers in dollar sales are Resident Evil: Requiem, 007 First Light, and Crimson Desert.

• EA Sports College Football 27 is the one new release in the top 10. It will most likely add a couple of positions by the end of the year.

• On mobile (data from Sensor Tower), the top of the U.S. revenue chart is MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, and Pokémon GO.

• Pokémon GO jumped 10 spots in revenue, to third place. Its revenue rose 230% versus June, driven by anniversary events: the game turned 10.

• Last War: Survival lost another four spots and fell to 10th. The game has been declining for three months straight: in May, revenue fell 30% versus April, and in June it fell another 13.8%. Its developers sharply cut user acquisition several months ago.

Source

Circana data on the U.S. market. Mobile figures provided by Sensor Tower.

Market

• In July 2026, Americans spent $4.5 billion on games (-10% YoY).

• Content spending was $4.1 billion (-9% YoY). Mobile content sales dropped the most, but console and PC content also declined versus last year.

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• Through the first seven months of 2026, the U.S. market is running 2% behind 2025.

• In July 2026, Americans spent $282 million on hardware (-29% YoY). Circana notes that this is the worst July since 2020 ($163 million).

• In units, hardware sales fell 39% versus July 2025. The average price of a new system rose 16%, to $542. Mat Piscatella notes that rising system prices are weighing on sales. The Nintendo Switch 2 is getting a price increase on September 1.

• Every platform declined in units: PlayStation 5 sales fell 6%, Xbox Series 18%, and Nintendo Switch 2 51%. In dollars, the PlayStation 5 led July; in units sold, the Nintendo Switch 2 came first.

• After 14 months on the market, the Nintendo Switch 2 is running 11% ahead of the original Switch’s sales pace. Circana reported the same gap at the 11-month mark.

• Accessories brought in $178 million in July 2026 (-6% YoY). This is the worst July since 2019 ($144 million). Racing controller spending fell 26%, while cases and organizers grew 36% in dollar sales.

Game Sales

• Call of Duty: Black Ops II was the best-selling game of July in the U.S., thanks to the release of its PS4 and PS5 port. Call of Duty: Black Ops, also re-released on PlayStation, took 5th place on the chart.

• EA Sports College Football 27 was second among new releases by sales.

• Through the first seven months of 2026, the top performers in dollar sales are Resident Evil: Requiem, 007 First Light, and Crimson Desert.

• EA Sports College Football 27 is the one new release in the top 10. It will most likely add a couple of positions by the end of the year.

• On mobile (data from Sensor Tower), the top of the U.S. revenue chart is MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, and Pokémon GO.

• Pokémon GO jumped 10 spots in revenue, to third place. Its revenue rose 230% versus June, driven by anniversary events: the game turned 10.

• Last War: Survival lost another four spots and fell to 10th. The game has been declining for three months straight: in May, revenue fell 30% versus April, and in June it fell another 13.8%. Its developers sharply cut user acquisition several months ago.

Source

Amir Satvat runs his own game industry layoff tracker as part of ASGC, his free project that helps people in the gaming industry find work. The data is collected from public sources.

Forecast

• According to the most recent forecast (August 11), 14,666 people will lose their jobs in the gaming industry in 2026. That is 788 more than in the July 10 forecast.

A word from our sponsor

Game studios run on contractors — artists, composers, QA testers, translators — often spread across a dozen countries. That’s a lot of contracts, tax rules, and IP clauses to track. Mellow handles all of it: compliant contracts, automated payments, and IP protection built in, for contractors in 150+ countries.

Explore Mellow →

• Confirmed layoffs as of August 11 stand at 10,140. Amir expects another 4,526 people to lose their jobs over the rest of the year.

• The first version of the forecast, from January 6, projected 8,025 layoffs for the year. Since then, the estimate has grown by almost 83%.

• 2024 remains the record year, with 15,631 layoffs. But 2026 is already ahead of 2022 (8,500), 2023 (10,500), and 2025 (9,197). And there are still two quarters to go. So, unfortunately, 2026 could set a new ugly record.

• Over five years, from 2022 to 2026, Amir Satvat has counted 58,494 layoffs.

Geography and Concentration

• Since the start of 2026, the industry has seen more than 105 layoff events.

• North America accounts for 66% of all layoff events and about 79% of affected people. The US has roughly 48% of all layoffs, and Canada ~17%. Europe accounts for ~30%.

• The five largest reductions in the gaming industry accounted for 56% of all layoffs; the top two alone accounted for around 44%.

• One of those largest rounds is Microsoft. The company cut 1,600 people from its gaming division and warned that it will part with the same number of employees over the next year.

Source

The report was presented on July 30 at the CDEC conference in Shanghai. This is the official industry data, compiled by the game committee of China’s CADPA association.

All figures in the report are given in yuan. Dollar conversions here and below use a rate of ~6.74 yuan per dollar as of mid-August 2026.

Market

• China’s domestic market in H1’26 was 188.45 billion yuan (~$27.9 billion), +12.17% YoY.

• By June 2026, the country had 684 million players (+0.82% YoY). The audience is growing slowly, so the market’s growth came from higher revenue per user.

• Chinese self-developed games earned 163.36 billion yuan (~$24.2 billion) domestically, up 16.31% YoY. They account for 86.7% of the domestic market, and they are growing noticeably faster than the market overall.

Managing a distributed dev team shouldn’t mean managing a compliance headache. Mellow’s Contractor Management gives you ready-made contracts, IP compliance, and automated payouts for contractors in 150+ countries — for $35/month per contractor.

See Contractor Management →

Exports

• Abroad, Chinese games earned $12.37 billion (+30.22% YoY). Both successful legacy projects and new releases are behind that figure.

• Geographically, the main markets for Chinese mobile games have not changed: the US (32.31% of overseas revenue), Japan (14.05%), and South Korea (7.48%). Together, that is 53.84%.

• Germany, the UK, and France together account for 10.14% of overseas revenue, and their share grew slightly.

• By revenue, among the top 100 Chinese mobile games abroad, Strategy leads with 46.91% of revenue. Merge games are next (16.22%), followed by RPG (9.62%). Shooter is fourth at 8.31%.

• Over the year, merge games added 9.74 percentage points of revenue share.

Platforms

• Mobile games inside China earned 135.21 billion yuan (~$20.1 billion), up 7.9% YoY. That is 71.75% of the domestic market.

• Among the top 100 mobile games by revenue, RPG is the most common genre (22% of the total), followed by Strategy (11%).

• By revenue in that top 100, though, Shooter takes first place: 26.23% of all revenue, and it grew noticeably over the year. MOBA dropped to second (18.96% of all revenue), and RPG is third (14.35%).

• PC client games earned 45.29 billion yuan (~$6.7 billion), up 27.92% YoY. The segment accounts for 24.03% of the market and is the second fastest-growing part of the domestic market after mini games. CADPA attributes the growth to cross-play between PC and mobile versions and strong results from several long-running projects.

• Browser games earned 2.02 billion yuan (~$299 million), down 8.47% YoY. The decline has continued for several years.

• Console games earned 961 million yuan (~$143 million), down 7.06% YoY. The main reason is the absence of hits on the scale of Black Myth: Wukong.

• Games with esports disciplines earned 89.62 billion yuan (~$13.3 billion), up 11.12% YoY.

• Anime games earned 13.27 billion yuan (~$1.97 billion), down 8.97% YoY. Several large projects saw revenue decline, and new releases could not cover the gap.

• Casual mobile games earned 18.21 billion yuan (~$2.7 billion), +10.74% YoY. In-app purchases accounted for 67% of all revenue, and advertising for 33%.

• Mini games earned 31.66 billion yuan (~$4.7 billion), up 36.01% YoY. That is the fastest-growing segment of the Chinese gaming market.

• Within mini games, in-app purchases brought in 21.14 billion yuan (+38.12%), and advertising 10.52 billion yuan (+31.94%). The split barely changed vs. H1’25: 66.8% IAP revenue against 33.2% advertising.

• Board games appear in the report for the first time. The segment earned 3.87 billion yuan (~$574 million) and grew slightly, up 4.03% YoY.

• Digital board games brought in 1.997 billion yuan (51.6% of total revenue), and physical ones brought in 1.87 billion yuan (48.4%).

Source

Player behavior data comes from a survey.

The Market

• India’s gaming market passed the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2025, generating $1.04 billion (+14.8% YoY).

• In 2026, Niko Partners expects the market to grow to ~$1.2 billion, and to $1.77 billion by 2030. The five-year CAGR is 11.2%. That makes India the fastest-growing market Niko Partners tracks.

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• In 2025, the country had 511 million players. In 2026, that number will pass 550 million, and by 2030 analysts expect the country to have more than 700 million gamers.

• India’s ARPU in 2025 was $2.04; by 2030 the metric should rise to $2.52.

The Audience and Its Preferences

• The share of women among players rose from 43% in 2023 to 49% in 2026. Male and female gamers in the country are now split almost evenly.

• In June 2026, games outside the Battle Royale genre accounted for 62.8% of mobile revenue, up from 53.2% in June 2023. Battle Royale still leads the market, but concentration is declining.

• Niko Partners notes that Indian players are spending more time with older PC games.

• Various UGC platforms such as Roblox and Minecraft are also gaining popularity in the country. They are especially popular with younger audiences. Roleplay servers in GTA, which Niko Partners mentions separately as a popular livestreaming format, arguably belong in the same bucket.

• 31.5% of Indian players prefer to buy in-game content outside the usual storefronts: through web shops, third-party stores, and top-up cards.

• 84.6% of players have paid via UPI at least once. Credit cards are used by 31.5% of players, so UPI is the country’s main payment method.

• Indian players’ attitudes toward generative AI have shifted noticeably: they are now more cautious about how both developers and other players use it. Niko Partners links this to the economy and to the conversation around AI’s impact on jobs in the country.

Source

All numbers are collected until June 30, 2026.

Mobile Market

IAP revenue is gross (before store commission); it includes paid downloads, in-app purchases, and subscriptions. Ad revenue and third-party purchases are not counted. Downloads are counted once per Apple or Google account.

Sensor Tower doesn’t count D2C revenue, third-party store revenue, or Android revenue in China.

• Mobile games earned $40 billion in IAP revenue (-2.0% YoY). By IAP revenue, the hybrid casual segment is growing, and casual projects are holding steady. But the mid-core genre is losing revenue.

• Downloads fell to 24 billion (-11.9% YoY), and total playtime was 221 billion hours (the same as in the first half of 2025).

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• Hypercasual games lost the most downloads.

• People played casual projects less (in hours) and spent more time in mid-core projects. That didn’t translate into revenue growth, though. The games people spend the most time in are Roblox (which Sensor Tower classifies as mid-core), Garena Free Fire and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.

• The US is the largest mobile market by IAP revenue ($12.1 billion; -7% YoY), China is second ($6.46 billion - but without the Android market. In reality China is most likely ahead of the US), with Japan ($4.94 billion; -10% YoY) and South Korea ($2.32 billion; -10% YoY) behind them.

• Europe is the only region growing in IAP revenue. On average, it grew 10%, with Germany (+7%), the UK (+10%) and France (+8%) as the main drivers.

• India leads in downloads (3.78 billion installs), Indonesia and India lead in time spent, and Asia accounts for roughly half of all hours mobile users spend in games.

• Downloads fell in every large region. Africa held up best (-2%), while several large European and Southeast Asian markets lost close to 20%.

• By IAP revenue, Strategy is the largest genre. In H1’26, it earned $9.27 billion; Puzzle was second at $8.07 billion, and RPG third at $6.12 billion.

• At the same time, Strategy has only a billion installs in H1’26. For comparison, Puzzle has 5.07 billion, Simulation 4.57 billion, Arcade 4.52 billion.

• On hours spent, Simulation leads (44.14 billion hours), followed by Puzzle (39.33), Strategy (33.37), and Shooter (32.69).

• Downloads fell by roughly 12% across every genre, but Puzzle IAP revenue grew almost 20% while Strategy fell about 5%. So the revenue gap narrowed from $3 billion to $1.2 billion over the year.

• Almost the entire absolute revenue gain came from Puzzle: +$353 million in the US, +$89.2 million in Germany, +$80.2 million in Japan, +$76.3 million in the UK, +$63.5 million in Korea, +$53.3 million in China. Puzzle grew by roughly $1.3 billion compared with H1’25 revenue. That’s about 70% of the entire absolute revenue gain in the market.

• The biggest growth outside Puzzle came from the Shooter category in China (+$364 million), largely thanks to Delta Force. The steepest IAP revenue drops were Casino in the US (-$648 million), RPG in Korea (-$297 million), and RPG in Japan (-$229 million).

• By downloads, the only large gain is Strategy in India (+36.5 million installs). Everything else is either flat or falling.

• People in the US started playing simulation games more - by 0.6 billion hours; in India they play far less shooter and casino; and action in Russia grew by 1.3 billion hours. Sensor Tower writes that this happened against the backdrop of Brawl Stars’ comeback, but I couldn’t find confirmation of that.

• 4X Strategy revenue has been falling for a second straight quarter after peaking at $3.09 billion in Q4’25.

• Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival together earned $370 million less in H1’26 than a year earlier. Kingshot (+461%, to $700 million) and Last Z: Survival Shooter (+328%, to $359 million) came along to replace them.

• The Match Merge 2 genre nearly doubled - to $1.91 billion - and moved into third place among puzzle sub-genres. The main driver is Gossip Harbor (+135%).

• Match Swap is on a plateau ($1.81 billion in Q2’26).

• Coin Looters keeps losing revenue on the back of MONOPOLY GO!’s decline (-18%), but Sensor Tower ties that to D2C. The same goes for the revenue drop in slots, as companies try to pull their biggest spenders onto their own channels.

• The whole RPG genre is going through a rough time. The MMORPG decline is especially pronounced.

• Sensor Tower also included a breakdown of how different types of users play different genres. In the UK, for example, sports fans are 6.8 times more likely than the average user to play sports games. And in the US, parents are, for some reason, 4.4 times more likely to play racing games. I'm not sure what to do with this information yet.

Competitive Landscape

• Leaders by IAP revenue: Honor of Kings ($1.078 billion), Last War: Survival ($977 million), Whiteout Survival ($918 million).

• Honor of Kings took back first place despite a 2% YoY decline in money terms. Last War and Whiteout Survival each fell roughly 16%. Gossip Harbor and Kingshot broke into the top 10 with triple-digit growth, pushing out Roblox and Pokémon TCG Pocket.

• Leaders by downloads: Block Blast! (175.4 million), Free Fire (153.6 million), Roblox (150.8 million).

• By average MAU, Roblox is ahead of everyone in the world (440.3 million), Free Fire is second (268.5 million), and Block Blast! third (252.5 million). None of the audience leaders made the top 10 by revenue, except Candy Crush Saga.

• Tencent is the world's largest mobile games company. It has $5.03 billion in IAP revenue and 934 million downloads in H1’26. Century Games moved into second place with $1.93 billion in IAP revenue (+45% YoY) and 119 million downloads. Over the year, it narrowed Tencent’s lead from 3.7x to 2.6x.

• Eight publishers cleared the billion mark for the half, including Scopely ($1.53 billion), Microsoft ($1.36 billion), Dream Games ($1.23 billion), Playrix ($1.18 billion), Microfun ($1.06 billion), and Take-Two ($1.04 billion).

• The main breakouts of H1’26 are Microfun and Omnilojo ($494 million), both of which doubled IAP revenue and moved into the top 10 and top 20, respectively. Omnilojo, though, has already fallen off its H2’25 revenue peak.

• The most notable declines are Roblox (-29%, $403 million in IAP revenue on 143 million downloads) and miHoYo (-24%, $544 million). Both are explained by heavy use of D2C tools.

• Arrow puzzles were one of the biggest download drivers of H1’26, and the balance of power inside the genre shifted twice. Arrows held the lead through winter and spring with a peak of 7.61 million downloads in the week of May 11; Amaze GO! launched in mid-February and reached 5.68 million in the week of May 4, and Arrow Puzzle grew steadily all period and overtook both by early July (4.24 million against 3.01 and 3.23 million).

• Sensor Tower broke down the ad placements in all three. Non-rewarded interstitials after a level are there in all of them, but Arrow Puzzle unlocks its rewarded offers noticeably earlier: restoring a life from level 1-2 versus level 4 in Arrows and level 15 in Amaze GO!. On top of that, on iOS Arrow Puzzle has separate placements for coins, the eraser, Grid Guide, Magic Wand, and double rewards - the game simply has more ad placements.

• Top teams make tens of thousands of ad creatives in half a year. The leaders are MONOPOLY GO! (49,300), Pokémon GO (33,700) and Candy Crush Saga (26,300).

• Pokémon GO, Candy Crush Saga, Royal Match and Gossip Harbor were also among the creative-count leaders in H1’25. Many people note that creatives (and their volume) are a major success factor in today’s market.

• By share of ad impressions within the top 100 in H1’26, the leaders were Gossip Harbor, Pokémon GO, and Kingshot. Even though they made fewer creatives than MONOPOLY GO!.

• Marketing mixes differ across the board: Gossip Harbor and Pixel Flow! are almost entirely on AppLovin (56.8% and 60% of impressions). Pokémon GO, by contrast, is diversified: AdMob has 25.4%, AppLovin 19.1%, Vungle 14%, and Unity 11.7%. Kingshot started using AppLovin more, and MONOPOLY GO! went the other way, toward Meta.

• In terms of traffic sources, everything rests on paid acquisition. But some projects (MONOPOLY GO!, for example) have an organic share of 42.6%.

• 8 of the 13 events in non-sports games built around the FIFA World Cup in the US used a match-betting mechanic.

• Sports games themselves grew 7% YoY in IAP revenue on the back of the football festivities (the market, as a reminder, fell 2%), though downloads still fell 8% (against 12% market-wide).

• Roblox leads in install base (746 million devices in June 2026), but Block Blast! is right behind (622 million devices).

• Block Blast!’s average MAU grew 68% YoY on download growth of just 11%; Roblox’s MAU added 18% with no significant install growth. Brawl Stars’ downloads grew 35%.

• Retention for the January 2026 cohort in Royal Match is the envy of everyone - D1 60.9%, D7 31.5%, D30 17.8%, D180 6.8%. Block Blast! has the best D180 in the sample (7.93%) and the best D7 (33.4%).

• Whiteout Survival - D1 42.7% / D7 14.1% / D30 5.57% / D180 1.48%; Last War - D1 39.8% / D7 11.1% / D30 3.82% / D180 0.99%; Honor of Kings - D1 35% / D7 17.3% / D30 7.4% / D180 2.87%.

• It’s interesting how weak MONOPOLY GO!’s D1 Retention is (22.6%), while its D180 is good at 1.76%. That is understandable, though, given the project's scale and the high volume of non-targeted traffic.

• Among casual projects, Gossip Harbor (D1 44.7% / D7 20% / D30 10.8% / D180 4.81%) and Candy Crush Saga (D1 39.9% / D7 22.6% / D30 12.5% / D180 4.44%) have good numbers.

• All in Hole leads among hybrid casual projects in D1 retention (56.7%). Pixel Flow!, on the other hand, is more effective than any other project over the medium and long term (D30 12.5%; D180 3.62%).

• Hypercasual projects have good metrics too. Block Blast! stands out here (D1 Retention 53.5%; D7 33.4%; D30 21.7%; D180 7.93%). You can only dream of numbers like that.

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Advertising and Ad Monetization

Pathmatics tracks ad spend and impressions across 41 markets and 18 channels. In-game ad monetization data covers 19 countries.

• Ad revenue dominates in only three large markets: India (70.3%), Indonesia (55.8%), and Brazil (54.7%). Sensor Tower notes that the approach to the product and to running it should be different when entering these markets, since payment behavior differs a lot from T1 markets.

• 54.8% of all ad impressions come from in-app inventory. YouTube is second (16.4% - and it’s the fastest-growing channel in H1’26), Instagram third (11.4%).

• By genre, more than half of all spend goes to Puzzle (33.1%) and Strategy (21%). In Tier-1 Asian countries, more of the spend goes to Strategy.

• By Sensor Tower’s estimates, ad revenue from February through April 2026 breaks down as follows: hypercasual games - $2.02 billion, casual - $2.01 billion, hybridcasual - $827 million, mid-core - $190 million.

• By genre, Puzzle accounts for 53% of ad revenue ($2.65 billion).

• By sub-genre, Block leads with $519 million (10% of all ad revenue, thanks to Block Blast!).

• AppLovin and AdMob accounted for almost 65% of all mobile game ad revenue in May 2026, against 61% in January 2025. AppLovin has 35.6%, AdMob 29.2%.

• The networks that fell the most are Unity Ads (from 6.5% to 3.8%) and Supersonic (from 4.6% to 1.9%).

• AppLovin shows strong results in the hypercasual, hybridcasual, and casual segments. AdMob leads by a wide margin in the mid-core segment (57.8% in May 2026).

• Top advertisers inside mobile games by impressions (January-May 2026): TikTok (6.42 billion), Facebook (5.35 billion), Gossip Harbor (5.35 billion), Arrows Puzzle Escape (4.99 billion), Kingshot (4.93 billion).

• In the US, the largest advertiser is Pixel Flow!, with 2.4 billion impressions - the game outspends both social platforms and e-commerce.

• Top games by ad revenue (January-May 2026): Block Blast! $127 million, Vita Mahjong $89.8 million, Candy Crush Saga $81.1 million.

• Vita Mahjong doubled its ad revenue year over year and overtook Candy Crush Saga. Every casual game in the top 10 earned less over the first 5 months of 2026 than over the same period in 2025. All of the growth is concentrated in hypercasual projects and newcomers like Pixel Flow!.

• Among publishers, Hungry Studio leads with $131 million, 60% of which comes from markets outside the US. Almost all of the studio’s revenue is Block Blast!. On US revenue share, Easybrain (Sudoku.com) leads, followed by Onesoft (Goods Puzzle), with Hungry Studio only third.

• The publisher rankings show that most of the top in T1 countries is taken by companies where IAP revenue overwhelmingly outweighs ad revenue.

PC and Console Market

The PC/console market is estimated using Video Game Insights data. It covers 140,000+ games in 50+ countries on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox. Copies sold include free giveaways through subscriptions (PS Plus, Game Pass).

• Top publishers by copies sold: EA (63.3 million), Ubisoft (43.8 million), Capcom (39.2 million), Sony (37.5 million), Xbox Game Studios (23.6 million). Six of the ten are American, three Japanese, and from Europe there’s only Ubisoft. The ranking includes free copies given away through PS+ and Xbox Game Pass.

• Sensor Tower calculated how dependent different companies are on a single project in 2026. For 2K, NBA 2K26 accounts for 34.4% of all copies; for EA, FC 26 is 27.3%; Warner Bros. 25.6%; Rockstar 23.8%; Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem 22.7%. Ubisoft is in a healthier position - The Crew Motorfest accounts for 7.3% of copies. There’s no serious single-product dependency at Bandai Namco (7.7%), Sony (10.9%) or Xbox Game Studios (13.4%).

• The best-selling game of the half (by copies) is EA SPORTS FC 26 ($70, 16.9 million copies). Second is MECCHA CHAMELEON - 13.1 million copies (though the game costs $6).

• Among F2P projects, Roblox comes first (4 million copies), then Where Winds Meet (3.5 million), skate. (3.2 million) and War Thunder (3.2 million).

• It’s worth noting the density of cheap projects at the top of the chart: MECCHA CHAMELEON, PEAK (3.5 million copies), R.E.P.O. (3.2 million copies), and, at a stretch, Slay the Spire 2 belongs here too (the game priced at $25).

• Action is Steam's most popular genre. It accounted for 107 million copies, 622 releases, and $2.005 billion in revenue from copy sales, which is about 40% of the market.

• RPG is the best genre in terms of monetization. 39 million copies sold brought in $786 million. 197 projects came out in the genre.

• Shooters are bought more often - 52 million copies in H1’26 - but they earn less ($566 million on 134 releases).

• Steam’s revenue growth has stalled for the first time in several years. In H1’26 revenue came to $5.36 billion - 5% less than in H1’25 ($5.65 billion).

• The picture on copies sold is similar.

• At the same time, competition is getting tougher. 11,800 games have already come out in H1’26 - more than in any other half over the last 5 years (and in history, for that matter).

• Game sales on PlayStation fell vs. last year and vs. the previous half. 492 million copies were sold in H1’26. Xbox shows similar dynamics, with 372 million copies sold in H1’26.

• On PlayStation in H1’26, EA SPORTS FC 26 leads by a wide margin - 12.3 million copies; Resident Evil Requiem is second (5.3 million copies) and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 third (4.3 million).

• On Xbox, distribution by copies is smoother: Subnautica 2 leads (3.4 million copies), with NBA 2K26 and EA Sports FC 26 at 3 million each.

• In PC and console game advertising, YouTube leads globally (27.3% of spend), Instagram is second (17.7%) and Facebook third (16.8%).

• By genre, more than half of ad spend goes to RPG (31.3%) and Shooter (25.3%), followed by Simulation (17.1%) and Action (12.5%).

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Browser Games

• Visits to browser game sites grew slightly in H1’26 against last year - to 9.45 billion. Average DAU, meanwhile, is flat at around 52,000.

• All of that (small) growth is concentrated in Asia. European countries, by contrast, are declining.

• The top 3 web game platforms: poki.com (675 million desktop visits and 533 million mobile), itch.io (459 and 679 million), and crazygames.com (606 and 191 million).

• Poki’s global lead rests on Asia - the site has 304 million desktop and 343 million mobile visits there. In Europe and Latin America, itch.io is more popular. Games on Crazy Games are played more often on desktop, while on itch.io - surprisingly - it’s mobile. Poki sits somewhere in the middle.

• Traffic volume doesn’t correlate with engagement. People stay longest on en.boardgamearena.com (23.6 minutes per visit, 2.7 visits a day) and pokemonshowdown.com (21.5 minutes, 2.1 visits) - these are more niche sites. Among the large platforms, crazygames.com holds its audience best (18.2 minutes, 1.7 visits).

• Almost all web platforms run on direct and organic traffic. For poki.com, those channels account for 94.1% of traffic, for crazygames.com 93.3%. I’d guess that’s a very high-margin business.

Source

I know it hasn’t been much from me this week, but only because Sensor Tower released their gigantic, almost 50-page-long H1’26 report, which I’m planning to post on Monday. I guess everyone shifting their business to PC/Console won’t be happy to learn that Steam in H1’26 declined vs. the previous year, which might indicate we’re reaching the ceiling. Or it’s just a bad half-a-year without too many big releases, or with too many releases priced at $5-15.

Read more

Reports of the week:

1. Games and Numbers (July 29 — August 11, 2026)

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Games and Numbers (July 29 — August 11, 2026)