Tipping point How in-game spending will eat the games world
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20,000 foot view: Though parts of the games industry still stigmatize in-game purchases, the business model is a fundamental part of a successful and sustainable growth formula for games companies. The current macroeconomic climate will only catalyse their importance. Diving into the nuances of in-game spenders’ behaviours and attitudes unlocks significant growth and conversion optimization opportunities for games companies that are already in pursuit of this business model. For companies that have yet to embrace in-game spending, the time is now. Not just from the commercial point of view, but also for the sake of satisfying expectations of next-gen gamers in the mid to long-term.
Key insights
- Regular monthly spending is still niche with gamers doing so
- Ad hoc spending is strong, with of gamers and of PC gamers spent money on in-game items one month in 2022
- South Korea, and US gamers are most to engage in regular in-game with UK gamers ranking last of the nine markets in
- In-game purchasing grow as the next generation gamers ages
- In-game purchasing one of the least male-skewing behaviours, providing further opportunities to the gender gap in gaming
- At games subscribers are more than five as likely to regularly spend on items than the gamer average
- Gamers who in games-related behaviours besides gameplay viewing or live streaming) are over-indexing on in-game purchasing
- While certain genres (e.g., MOBA) are better for in-game sales than others puzzles), opportunities exist to drive spending across all genres
- With changing motivations to play games, in-game games companies have a new rationale to review their thinking the matter
Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Activision, Electronic Arts (EA), FIFA , Frontier, League of Legends , Madden NFL, Steam, Ubisoft