More Games in 2021, But...
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #92 - Just Super. Check out the full article for more insights.
While I'm on the topic of games, as we end 2021, I was curious to see if game developers have been as busy this year as they were in 2020--a little preview from our upcoming report on trends in 2021.
Using Explorer, here's the number of new games released across the App Store and Google Play over the last couple of years.
Did more games get released in 2021? The answer is a bit complicated. Technically yes, game developers shipped 3% more iOS and Android games in 2021 vs. 2020. But that 3% is a pretty misleading number on its own.
When broken down by store, the numbers tell a completely different story. New game releases on Google Play actually grew 9% in 2021, while releases on the App Store decreased by 13%.
Nearly 243K new games were released in 2021 across the App Store and Google Play. 187K of those went into Google Play, and the remaining 55K went into the App Store. In 2020 the numbers were 172K and 64K, respectively.
A look at the monthly numbers easily explains the slump on the iOS side.
The first quarter saw massive growth over 2020. Each month had a double-digit increase. But then came April, and growth started going negative. What happened in April? App Tracking Transparency...
We keep looking at the impact ATT has on advertisers, but developers are hurting just as much because they can't monetize their games as much as they used to be pre-ATT.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
