Seven Predictions on Global Mobile Games in 2021 (Ⅱ)

5. Sports & Racing Games Race into a Billion Dollar Club

2020 was a very good year for Sports & Racing games as it breached the billion-dollar mark, with combined revenue of $1.2 billion compared to $827 million in 2019.

Overall, the Sports category didn’t see any new eyecatching entrants. 

In Sports Games, non-franchise based realistic sports games will keep growing in 2021 and we will see more direct imitations. Franchise sports, especially NBA, will continue to stagnate in growth and downloads, given the continued adverse effect of the pandemic on real-world leagues/franchises in 2021.

In 2020, Racing revenue increased by 24% while downloads in the category grew by 25%. When looking at the sub-genres (arcade & realistic racing), it seems that for the biggest COVID-19 profiteers we should look at realistic racing.

Arcade Racing will continue to be very fragmented and characterized by lower production value, hybrid revenue (ads plus in-app purchase) games.

It seems that nobody is even close to challenging the leader, especially in terms of free-to-play monetization. CSR2 will remain the sub-genre leader with more than 40% of market share in 2021.

Since it is believed that this year’s growth was fueled by the lockdown, we expect to see a revenue decline for the Racing genre in 2021.

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6. Casino Games After Lockdown and IDFA Depreciation

Although casino downloads spiked during the peak of COVID lockdown, the genre saw an impressive 37% year-on-year download growth. It is anticipated that download growth will likely continue to contract in 2021 as life begins to return to normal.

The big publishers will continue to diversify into other genres, while smaller publishers, in order to survive in the market, will try out a lot of new approaches to grab players’ attention.

In 2021, we will see a greater integration of meta-features into slots play. In addition, the machine itself will experience a round of upgrades, allowing players to make choices that affect outcomes. As slots try to stand out in an increasingly competitive market, they’ve begun using more novel marquee mechanics to draw players in. We expect slot designers to showcase these attention-grabbing mechanics by embracing more streamlined approaches.

Bingo continued to be the most asymmetrically dominated subgenre in 2020. The dramatic growth of casino’s download seems to be hitting Bingo the hardest. Almost all top apps saw downloads shrink substantially this year.

It is predicted that in 2021, the progress bar of Bingo will be longer, the upgrade mechanism will be more consistent, and it will cross multiple activities throughout the whole season.

The sub-genre is something of an incubator for puzzle or skill-based mini-games, which often take place of reward collection stages. This trend will continue, and those games that chase greater novelty in mini-game designs will stand out.

Poker didn’t see much bump in 2020, but it is predicted that Poker will continue to provide socialization and more customized tools in the game.

The latest sub-genre in Casino Games is the Social Casino. It seems that Coin Master will continue to grow, dominating this sub-genre.

7. The Next Big Shooter

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Shooters are the fifth largest genre on mobile at $2.1 billion in net revenues during 2020,

Free Fire will be a Top 3 Shooter for 2021. Free Fire’s monetization and content cadence are in fact very aggressive and its feature set is at least on par with its peers, or even better than its peers.

More Multiplayer Shooter games will introduce new progression verticals to drive RPI Growth. These games will introduce more of these modes and even start selling helpful items for this progression. These may still be limited to seasonal limited time modes, but progression is coming to PvP shooters.

New entrants with a focus on progression will find blue spots in the red ocean. Persistent demand that can be seen in the growing amount of installs outside the top titles create opportunities for market entry. The key is finding ways to retain and monetize this audience without succumbing to competing head-to-head against the top players in the category.