The Chinese game industry has continued to grow and become the biggest in the world over the past few years. Understanding what brought us here is essential, and we wanted to give you a small look into it as the number for the third quarter of this year was released.

Thanks to Gamma Data, we have all the data compiled, and a Cocos developed game is in the top 3! We’ve compiled their Chinese report to share some of the trends that are happening now in China compared to what you are seeing in the USA.

Overall numbers

China’s game market stayed steady with 383.0 million RMB thanks to some new games coming out as well as higher than normal performance for a few games being placed in the overseas market.

You can see that since early 2017, the industry continued to grow with only one or two drops usually happening at the end of the year. The decrease from last quarter was under 1% worrying people if this was the saturation point for the time being or just an early drop for the year.

Top 5 games

The top 10 games in China were saturated again with RPG and MMORPG games with “Honor of Kings” still holding on to the top spot with a commanding lead against #2 game “Game For Peace,” a new name for the popular PUBG Mobile game. #3 is a game built off the cocos engine! “Fantasy Westward Journey” is doing strong holding on as the best MMORPG game in China.

Three new games hit the top 10 this last quarter including “Crazy Racing” a racing game popularized initially in Korea, “Dragon Fantasy” a futuristic MMORPG, and the ARPG game “Authorization of Mu”, a spin-off of the popular game series “Mu Online”, that started in 2001.

Top Genres

Currently, the distribution of revenue of different genre games in the top 50 hasn’t changed, excluding a significant drop from ARPG games as well as MOBA, with a sharp increase in shooting games thanks to the success of “Game For Peace.”

For the next quarter, expect continued growth in ARPG releases, with over 35% of the games being released were from the genre with Card games and Sports games coming out highly as well.

Quick Notes

• Tencent now owns 55% of the game sales for the top 50 with Netease second with only 17%.
• 100 games from 40 companies are being released in Q4.
• IP Games are taking over the new top 5 for this quarter.
• One game directed towards women has cracked the top 5 new games for this quarter.
• AFK Arena is receiving considerable revenue as one of the top games coming out of China to the west.

If you want to know more, check out the full story in Chinese from Gamma Data: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_iMM-IAEFsbZj1aaUmth6g