Chinese Mobile Game Growth Continues With Excitement For 2021
2020.12.22 by COCOS
Company News

The year is almost over, which means we got a lot of data to hand out before we end the year and see what the final numbers are next year.  We want to, of course, thank Gamma Data for all their numbers and their work in sharing what is happening on the business side of the game industry

Earlier this month, Gamma Data had its 2021 Annual Conference on the mobile game industry's potential development in China. They had many prominent guests, but the big news was the future of the industry next year.

Co-founder and chief analyst Wang Xu shared that they predict even higher numbers for the next year, exceeding over 150 billion RMB. This comes from some incredibly big games coming out at the end of next year, as well as people staying home for the Spring Festival in February. High numbers these past months might also help if they continue in the early months of 2021.

Monthly sales from mobile games in China (Source: Gamma Data)

With that in mind, the number for November is 17.79 billion RMB, a drop of 4% from last month, but still the second-highest in the past six months. Researchers' excitement is that even though the numbers are down, no big promotions occurred this month, suggesting the surge will continue in the months to come when Christmas and other significant winter events happen.

Top Ten Mobile Games for November 2020 (Source: Gamma Data)

Looking at the top ten for this month, we didn't have much movement, with both Honor of Kings and Game for Peace (PUBG Mobile) holding on to the top spots. We're happy that Cocos-built games Three Kingdoms: Tactics and Fantasy Journey Westward continue to hold strong in the top 10.

Number of new games entering the Top 200 sales in the iOS market (Source: Gamma Data)

Once again, only 13 new games were added to the top 200 list of mobile games. But one interesting trend is the drop in new MMORPG games hitting the top 200 list dropping from 8 down to just 3 this past month. The big issue with this is that there is a rising trend of MMORPG and ARPG games hitting the top 50. Anyone making a new MMORPG will have a tough hill to climb to get players to stop their interest in other games.

Source: Gamma Data

One final item of note, Gamma Data and Newzoo shared data on Chinese game developers' growth overseas. We can see from the report that most of the sales this year total were 13 billion USD with most of this coming from the USA, UK, and Japan.

We recommend you check out Gamma Data's WeChat article on the subject for a deeper dive or contacting them for a copy of the findings for free!