In collaboration with Joost van Dreunen, CEO and co-founder of SuperData, we are continuing to publish these reports as a monthly column on the [a]list daily.
“The digital games category reached $1,032 million in total sales in October, up 11 percent from last year. Main drivers this month were the improvement of both the free-to-play MMO category, which reached $261 million, and the subscription-based MMOs, which were up 5 percent at $86 million in sales. Both mobile games and the social category were flat, and offset the seasonal uptick in DLC on both PC and console. We anticipate an increase in user acquisition cost unlike we’ve seen before, with publishers aggressively buying users to claim a top market position during the holiday season,” said van Dreunen.
The report shows social games staying steady while spending increased at 12 percent as compared to last year. Sales in the free-to-play category have increased 15 percent, although there were 1.7 million fewer players since last month. Free-to-play is expected to get less attention for the rest of the year as people turn their attention to consoles during the holidays. For pay-to-play, revenue continues to be on a downward slope while spending increased to $86 million.
Mobile revenue has gone up 27 percent since last year, but growth was flat in October and revenue had begun to trend downward at a mere 1 percent month-to-month. Social casino games continue to maintain a hold, as this category were in 2 of the 5 top grossing mobile games.
As seasons change, sales patterns follow and this is true of downloadable games on PC and console. Spending has gone up by 25 percent month-over-month in this category. SuperData predicts that downloadable sales will reach $400 million in December.
Source: SuperData
