According to GameRefinery‘s Q4 2020 Market Snapshot Report, Roblox increased its market share in the US to 4.85 percent. The company is right behind Gardenscapes publisher Playrix (with a 5.32 percent market share) and Candy Crush Saga publisher King (with a 4.88 percent market share).
The Q4 report highlights recent growth in the mobile gaming market. Other than Roblox, another company that increased its market share was MiHoYo. With the effects of Genshin Impact, the market share of the company grew by 1.5 percent.
Similarly, AR specialist Niantic experienced strong growth in the US, with an increase of 1.13 percent. Despite the pandemic, Pokemon Go, which managed to catch the players with various events, had a successful year in 2020. The game increased its lifetime revenue to $4 billion and achieved to be one of the five games that exceeded $1 billion in player spend last year.
The Top genres
When the market share is analyzed in terms of genre, the puzzle genre continued to dominate the market in Q4. The genre, which experienced a 1.26 percent decrease, closed the last year with a market share of 22.09 percent.
Casino games followed the puzzles with the second largest market share in the US with 17.17 percent. The rest of the top five continue as RPG 14.33 percent, strategy with 13.76 percent and simulation games with 9.51 percent.
In the mobile games market of Japan and China, RPG was the most preferred genre by consumers. The genres with the most market shares in two countries:
A trend also featured in the report was the battle pass, which became popular last year. According to the report, the use of battle passes in the 100 highest-grossing games in the USA increased from 20 percent to 40 percent.
In the past year, many more casual games have begun to adopt the battle pass feature. VP of GameRefinery Joel Julkunen said there was a 20 percent increase over a year ago. “More than 40% of top grossing 100 US games now have a Battle
Pass and with 20% growth compared to a year ago. There are no signs of this rate of adoption slowing down.”
