Mobile gaming market falls nearly 10% in the first half of 2022: report

The majority of mobile game genres saw a decline in sending and downloads in the first half of 2022, with the total mobile gaming market falling 9.6% year-over-year, says a new report.

According to Sensor Tower Game Intelligence data, the mobile gaming market dropped to $11.4 billion in the first half of 2022. Arcade and Tabletop games were the only categories to see revenue increase.

Arcade game revenue increased 14.8 % year-over-year to around $176 million. Other genres -- from hypercasual to RPG -- declined, AppleInsider reported.


Racing games saw the greatest drop with a 28.8% decline in revenue year-over-year, and geolocation augmented reality games dropped 26% in the same period.

In addition to the drop in revenue, mobile game downloads also fell 2.5% year-over-year to 2.4 billion.

Revenue for just the second quarter of 2022 decreased by 11.4% to $5.6 billion, although downloads remained relatively flat at 1.2 billion.

The report attributes the overall drop in the mobile gaming market to a variety of headwinds and challenges, including inflation, the end of Covid-19 lockdowns, and privacy changes like the deprecation of the IDFA tag.