China’s Game Industry Achieves H1 Revenue of $21.8B

A report released by two Chinese game industry institutions on July 21 showed that from January to June, the actual sales revenue of China’s game market was 147.789 billion yuan ($21.84 billion), down 1.80% year-on-year, the first annual decline in recent years.

The number of gamers is about 666 million, down 0.13% year-on-year, including 655 million mobile gamers.

The official pointed out that the annual decline of market revenue and user scale is mainly due to the decrease in user income, consumption willingness and the increase in operating costs of game enterprises during the pandemic. The declining user scale also indicates that the the quality competition for the gaming industry is increasing.

From January to June, the actual sales revenue of self-developed games in the domestic market was 124.582 billion yuan ($18.43 billion), down 4.25% year-on-year. In the same period, the overseas sales revenue of Chinese games reached $8.989 billion, up 6.16% year-on-year, showing that the growth rate of overseas markets is also slowing down.

In 2022, the number of countries and regions in which Chinese mobile games were accessed increased significantly. The United States and Japan remained the most important two markets for mobile games that are trying to go overseas. South Korea, ranked third, is no longer stable, as the proportion of other regions is increasing year by year. The change of ranking shows that China’s self-developed games are constantly expanding into emerging markets, and the development space is very broad.

Revenue from strategy, role-playing and shooting games accounts for more than 70% of the total revenue of all Chinese mobile games, remaining popular in overseas markets. In the report on the first half of last year, the strategy game market share was 28% larger than that of role-playing games. However, the gap is less than 20% this year.

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From January to June this year, the actual sales revenue of China’s e-sports game market was 63.712 billion yuan, down 11.59% year-on-year. The negative impact of the pandemic on the e-sports industry is prominent. Less offline events and poor supply of livestreaming content leads to a significant decline in users’ enthusiasm for participating in online games and their willingness to pay.