In recent years, there have been many changes and changes in the Korean mobile game market. In terms of the overall market share, the change in the number is not obvious, which also means that the traffic in the Korean market has basically peaked, but the market threshold for entering the market has increased a lot, in other words, the competition in the entire market has become more intense.
The second is the impact of Chinese manufacturers. Under the trend of going to sea, many domestic manufacturers have set their sights on the Korean market and achieved considerable results, especially the emergence of many explosive games, which has activated the crisis awareness of Korean manufacturers. In the past six months, in 2021, Korean local enterprises Kakao, Netmarble, Devsisters have successively created a number of excellent products such as "Odin: The Rise of Valhalla", "Two Countries: Staggered World", "Gingerbread Man Kingdom" and so on, hoping to make the Korean people's love for products tilt to local products, which has also promoted the growth of Korean mobile game market data to a certain extent.
On March 1, Sensor Tower released the "2021 Korea Mobile Game Market Insights", which summarizes the overall situation of the Korean mobile game market in 2021.
Similar to many markets around the world, the download volume of Korean mobile games has also declined significantly, mainly because the epidemic has gradually been controlled and the public has spent less time on games. Total korean mobile game downloads in 2021 were 551 million, down 15% from the same period in 2020. Among them, the download volume of App Store mobile games accounted for 18.8%, and the download volume of Google Play mobile games accounted for 81.2%.
However, in terms of revenue, thanks to the excellent performance of many products, the revenue of the Korean mobile game market in 2021 increased from 5.37 billion US dollars last year to 5.72 billion US dollars, an increase of 6.5% year-on-year, of which the growth rate of Google Play and App Store platforms was 5.5% and 10.8% respectively. In terms of market share, Google Play and App Store revenue accounted for 80.6% and 19.4% respectively.
Compared with the iOS and Android markets, the total number of downloads of the former games decreased slightly year-on-year, and only the music category relied on the music element's "Idol Dream Festival!! Music's outstanding performance underpins growth. However, the decline in downloads did not affect revenue, and the revenue growth rate of analog games and music games both exceeded 70%. Role-playing mobile games are still the largest game category in the Korean market with the largest revenue share, accounting for 67% of revenue, of which new products such as "Two Countries: Staggered Worlds" are indispensable. For the latter, music, text, simulation and role-playing product downloads and revenue are all growing trends, Mihayou's "Original God" performed well, helping the adventure mobile game market grow by 77.2%, becoming the fastest growing category in the Android market, followed by audio games and simulation games, with a growth rate of 58.6% and 46.7% respectively.
Regarding South Korea's popular mobile games, it can be said that there are both new faces and old friends, and in the Top 10 downloads of the list of popular games in the Korean market, there are 4 products for new products, namely the simulation game "Cookie Run: Kingdom", the casual game "Count Masters", "Two Kingdoms" and the MOBA mobile game "Pokémon Collection". Among them, "Cookie Run: Kingdom" won the top spot with 5 million downloads.
Regarding the revenue top 10, RPG mobile games are still the most gold-sucking mobile game types in South Korea, accounting for up to 80%, and the top two are still occupied by "Paradise 2M" and "Paradise M" that "will not fall for ten thousand years". There are 4 new products, namely "Odin: Divine Judgment", "Cookie Run: Kingdom", "Two Kingdoms" and "Heaven W", of which "Odin: Rebellion" achieved $350 million in revenue in only half a year, and its strength is close to the Heaven series. It is worth mentioning that 4399's "Sword of Miracles", Miha you's "Original God" and Lilith's "Awakening of All Nations" ranked 4th, 8th and 10th respectively.
In the top 10 of download volume and revenue growth, products such as Cookie Run: Kingdom, Odin: Divine Judgment, Two Kingdoms, Pokémon Collection, and Original God are also on the list.
In terms of revenue of issuers in the Korean market in 2021, the top 5 revenues are all Korean manufacturers, of which NCSOFT has attracted $1.14 billion with the strong appeal of the Paradise series of mobile games, more than double the second-place Netmarble, followed by Kakao Corp.
In addition to Mihayou and Lilith, the top 10 publishers in the revenue are mainly engaged in RPG games, which also reflects the preference of Korean players for RPG mobile games. In addition, Chinese publishers also have outstanding performance in South Korea, with a total of 6 Chinese publishers entering the Top20, namely 4399 Games, Mihayou, Lilith, Sanqi Interactive Entertainment, FunPlus and Lingxi Interactive Entertainment, with a cumulative revenue of nearly 650 million US dollars.
In 2021, domestic mobile games have achieved good results in South Korea, and a total of 21 domestic mobile games have entered the Top 100 of the South Korean download list in 2021, of which 9 have exceeded one million annual cumulative downloads. PUBG MOBILE, which topped the list, received 2.5 million downloads a year, with 2nd and 3rd places being won by the fashion-themed match-3 game Project Makeover and the word puzzle game.
In 2021, a total of 33 domestic games were shortlisted for the Korean best-seller list Top 100, with a total gold absorption of 980 million US dollars, accounting for 22.3% of the total revenue of the Top 100. The 4399 game "Sword of Miracles", Mihayou's "Original God" and Lilith's "Awakening of All Nations" respectively won the top 3 of the Korean best-seller list.
RPG, the favorite of Korean players, still maintained a strong ability to absorb money in 2021, with overall revenue up 9% year-on-year to $3.5 billion, but downloads fell 8% from last year. The reason for this is on the one hand, due to the steady operation of old RPG games such as the Paradise series mobile games, and on the other hand, it benefits from the continuous launch of high-quality new games, such as "Odin: Rebellion" and "Two Kingdoms" released in the middle of the year.
Previously, the Financial Times of the United Kingdom published an article saying that the pressure caused by competitors in China's game industry has led to a significant decline in the market value of South Korea's top game companies. According to market research firm FnGuide, the total market capitalization of the 29 South Korean game companies listed in South Korea fell by 25.2 trillion won (about $21 billion) in 2021, down 30 percent from the end of last year. In response, some Korean game publishers have set their sights on NFTs and HYIP games, and some Korean manufacturers have begun to think about how to optimize the payment model.
For domestic manufacturers, the future in the Korean market may face more challenges, and one of the problems that domestic small and medium-sized manufacturers need to think about when going to sea is how to avoid a game to death and complete the strategy of long-term foothold. Nowadays, players in the Korean market are also providing higher requirements for games, and domestic products must also learn to take into account more, otherwise they will be eliminated by menacing latecomers.