Explosion of mobile games during containment

During the lockdown, people kept busy as best they could and many turned to mobile games which saw their downloads explode. With most shops and public places closed, life slowed down, but the mobile games sector weathered the storm quite well.

This is the conclusion of a report by App Annie, a US company specialising in mobile data collection and analysis. Already observed in April, the trend is now confirmed.

A 40% increase per week

In France, if we compare the month of January (pre-containment) and the month of March (beginning of the containment), mobile game downloads have increased by 40% per week. A nice boost that should put a smile on the face of the various game publishers specialising in this platform.

The top three best-selling games in France are Clash of Clans (Supercell), Saint Seyia: Awakening (Tencent) and Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle (Bandai Namco). It can even be said that France has been more greedy than the others. It is above the average increase in the world over this period which is "only" 35%. Among the main markets, only Spain (+65%) and Japan (+50%) did better than us.

Mobile gaming a global phenomenon

Gaming on phones is a global phenomenon that is gaining momentum. According to the report, gamers spend far more money on mobile than on home consoles or computers. In 2019, mobile games accounted for almost 3 times more spending than PC games and the gap is growing.

France is no exception to the rule. However, the leading consumers are still the Americans and the Chinese. The comparison remains complicated since the latter are much more numerous.

Core-Gamers also on Mobile

For a long time, mobile games were associated with weekend gamers. Today, the smartphone is well and truly integrated into the gaming culture. Besides games, downloads of applications such as Discord (communication) or Twitch (streaming) have also exploded.

On the iPhone in France, Discord is usually above 75th place among the most downloaded applications every day. Twitch Discord, on the other hand, is content with 202nd place. During the lockdown both of these gamer apps made a big jump. Twitch was the 71st most downloaded app in the month of March. Discord was even number 1 in downloads for several days.