Game Market Revenue Growth Rate Declined in China in Q1

On Sunday, CNGgame released a report suggesting that from January to March 2022, the actual sales revenue of the game market in China was 79.474 billion yuan ($12.22 billion), up 3.17% year-on-year. The growth rate was lower than that of Q1, 2021.

The actual sales revenue of the mobile game market was 60.432 billion yuan, up 2.72% year-on-year, much lower than that of 6.25% in Q1, 2021. The growth in Q1 was driven by classic games such as Genshin Impact and Fantasy Westward Journey and new games such as Civilization and Conquest. However, the increment of new games was less than that of the same period last year.

China stopped granting new game licenses in Q1, and thus the mobile game ranking was relatively stable. Except for a new game that squeezed into the top ten, the rest were classic games of major companies.

Within the Top10 mobile games in Q1 in terms of revenue, about half were Tencent‘s games, with Honor of Kings and Game for Peace as the top two, CrossFire: Legends, League of Legends Mobile Game and Teamfight Tactics ranking 6th to 8th place respectively.

As for the rest, miHoYo’s Genshin Impact, NetEase‘s classic game Fantasy Westward Journey, Lingxi Games’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition, and Leiting Games’ Yinian Xiaoyao ranked third, fourth, fifth and ninth respectively.

Civilization and Conquest, a new SLG game by 4455, has a strong performance and is the only new game in the top ten. Its revenue in the first month after release was estimated to exceed 500 million yuan. Civilization and Conquest was officially launched at the end of December last year, and then ranked top in the iOS free list in China and listed among the Top5 in the best-selling list.

According to Sensor Tower, the revenue of Civilization and Conquest on the iOS platform alone reached $19 million in January while its strong performance promoted the company’s revenue of 4455 to increase by 134% month-on-month in January, and to rank eighth among the Top10 domestic mobile game publishers in January.

Among all of the new games, in Q1, SLG game Return to Empire – Age of Empires Mobile by Tencent Games’ TiMi Studio Group performed well. It earned more than 300 million yuan in the first month after its release, ranking second in the new game list. Qing Yu Nian developed by Zhejiang Century Huatong Group’s Shengqu Games, a major game manufacturer in China, ranked third in the new game list, earning over 100 million yuan in the first month after release.

SEE ALSO: Honor of Kings, World’s Top Grossing Mobile Game, Faces Allegations of Plagiarism

In overseas markets, there were no major changes in Q1. In Q1, 2022, the actual sales revenue of China’s self-developed games in overseas markets was $4.554 billion, down 0.54% from the previous quarter, mainly because the new games failed to generate any huge increment.