Superdata has released a summary of its research on the worldwide digital games market for February 2016, claiming that the digital games market sales have increased by 10% year-over-year. League of Legends, Crossfire, Dungeon Fighter Online, World of Tanks, and Dota 2 lead the pack for “F2P MMO Games” by revenue, while the top-grossing sub MMOs by revenue are World of Warcraft, Lineage, TERA, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Blade & Soul. Yes, we are likewise puzzled over the classifications.
The firm predicts more sales of western companies to China, headlined by the impending sale of British-owned Jagex to a mining company overseas:
“Chinese companies will scoop up 1-2 western publishers a month from here on. The lesson to be drawn from Chinese mining company Shandong Hongda (600532.SS) in talks to buy RuneScape developer Jagex for $300 million is that it will happen again. The reason: China’s industrial firms are aggressively diversifying as the country’s economic growth slows. Western firms like Jagex allow Chinese companies to expand into new industries and regions. While the 15-year-old RuneScape does not have the mindshare it once did, remaining players continue to spend, and the browser-based MMO earned $6.2 million last month. On March 23, Jagex also released the open beta for Chronicle: RuneScape Legends, the company’s first entry in the $1.3B digital collectible card game market. Given the higher valuation of tech companies in China’s current market, we anticipate several more acquisitions to follow in the months to come.”
As always, we must point out that Superdata is a research firm that sells its data analysis; it doesn’t disclose its methodology or sources for peer review or looky-loos unless you pay for it.
