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With the advent of affordable mobile devices and widespread access to high-speed internet and 4G networks, mobile game developers have irrefutably usurped the gaming crown from their PC and console-based rivals.
But this brave new world of mobile gaming brings with it a unique set of challenges. While the Xbox One boasts nearly 2,500 games, and Playstation 4 offers over 2,600, Google Play offers gamers nearly half a million options. Indeed, based on our calculations — which you can find on our app store stats pages — that’s just under 12% of all apps available on the platform. As such, mobile game studios face the daunting challenge of standing out in a crowded market.
So, to help connect developers with their target consumers, Google has created 49 app and game categories. These range from ‘Action’, to ‘Puzzle’, to ‘Trivia’, and beyond. In this piece, we’ll cover the best game categories on Google Play by downloads over the last year. The data provided will be updated automatically on a weekly basis.
Now, before we go much further, we’d like to remind the mobile game designers out there that, because Google’s categories often overlap and vary in specificity, determining the best categories for your games requires some extra brainpower.
Compounding matters: one cannot assume that by selecting the most precise or best-sounding categories they will achieve the best possible results. So, that ‘extra brainpower’ will require some real-world insights into the mobile game market.
This is where game category download estimate trends come into play; these estimates provide valuable insight into the popularity of each category. This information can then be used by game developers to avoid downward trending categories and identify those on the rise. It can also be used to identify less competitive categories (i.e. those with fewer games) that appear to be on an upswing in terms of downloads.
If your head is already spinning, don’t worry! In what follows, we will provide a starting point for navigating the deceptively tricky process of picking the best categories for your games. We’ll cover:
Onward!
Let’s begin by examining game categories that are on the up and up. The data you will find in the following chart is from –
As you can see, Adventure leads the pack with 33.41% increase in monthly downloads, followed by Role playing at 31.33%, Music at 15.56%, Casual at 22.2%, and Music at 15.56%.
Contact us for a free consultation to see which game categories round out the best 10
Let’s examine these categories separately.
– trend for Adventure
In the graph below you will find how Adventure fared in the period between and . In Adventure was trending upwards, registering a change in downloads of 11.21%. By , it had reached 25.87%, trending downwards.
– trend for Role playing
Now for Role playing. Once again, the period we’re looking at is and . In Role playing was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 12.78%. By , it had reached 23.54%, trending downwards.
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– trend for Music
Moving on, here’s how Educational fared in the period between and . In Educational was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 26.12%. By , it had reached 29.74%, trending downwards.
– trend for Casual
In the following chart you will find how Casual fared in the period between and . In Casual was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 30.39%. By , it had reached 9.74%, trending downwards.
– trend for Music
Here you will find how Music fared in the period between and . In Music was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 26.03%. By , it had reached 2.96%, trending downwards.
Now let’s take a look at some app categories that aren’t doing so well. This data is for –
At the time of this analysis, Word took the biggest hit with a -17.45% decline in downloads over the month; followed by Sports which dropped by -17.12%, Trivia which dropped by -12.33%, Simulation which dropped by -9.22%, and Card which dropped by -6.06%.
Contact us for a free consultation and we’ll show you which categories complete the ‘bottom’ 10.
Once again, let’s examine each category separately.
– trend for Word
In the graph below you will find how Word fared in the period between and . In Word was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 14.24%. By , it had reached -24.9%, trending downwards.
– trend for Sports
Here you will find how Sports fared in the period between and . In Sports was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 13.19%. By , it had reached -30.21%, trending downwards.
Set up a free consultation and we’ll show you how to avoid downward trending categories.
– trend for Trivia
Below you will find how Trivia fared in the period between and . In Trivia was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 16.51%. By , it had reached -25.02%, trending downwards.
– trend for Simulation
In the following chart you will find how Simulation fared in the period between and . In Simulation was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 8.2%. By , it had reached -17.57%, trending downwards.
– trend for Card
Here you will find how Card fared in the period between and . In Card was trending upwards, registering a change in monthly downloads of 34.72%. By , it had reached -12.53%, trending downwards.
Now, it’s important to remember that not all app categories are alike — some are naturally larger than others. For instance, there will be more apps filed under ‘Games’ than under ‘Casino’, since ‘Casino’ is more or less a subset of ‘Games’.
However, it should not be assumed that because one category has more competition than another that it will therefore represent a larger share of global downloads. Indeed, it’s possible that less competitive categories can be overrepresented in global downloads owing to the extreme popularity of one or some of its apps.
In any case, these natural differences in app categories present app publishers with a dilemma:
This is a challenging question; and, of course, the answer varies from business to business. Still, with this in mind, we’ve taken a look at the top 5 ‘large’ (i.e. more competitive) and ‘small’ (i.e. less competitive) categories to offer app publishers a starting point to address it.
We begin with the best 5 ‘large’ categories. The following chart depicts annual downloads by category as a percentage of the sum of annual downloads for the top five categories. So, the percentages here should add up to 100%.
As you can see, Arcade ranks highest with 70,021 apps representing 10.67% of global downloads. Puzzle comes next with 67,280 apps making up 9.38% of global downloads. Then comes Casual with 14.16% making up 65,880 apps of global downloads. Then Action with 15.63% making up 33,871 apps of global downloads. Then, finally, Educational with 32,535 apps making up 5.54% of global downloads.
Contact us for a free consultation to see which categories round out the best 10!
Now the welterweights. Just as before, the following chart depicts annual downloads by category as a percentage of the sum of annual downloads for the top five categories. The percentages here should add up to 100% as well.
Here you’ll find that Strategy ranks highest with 11,311 apps representing 2.62% of global downloads. Sports comes next with 10,429 apps making up 3.89% of global downloads. Then comes Card with 10,730 apps making up 0.77% of global downloads. Then Casino with 7,771 apps making up 0.77% of global downloads. Then, finally, Music with 5,318 apps making up 2.22% of global downloads.
So, those are the best Google Play app categories by 2020-2021 download trends. By now we’ve hopefully done enough to show you that selecting the best categories for your app is not merely a descriptive exercise. It is, in fact, a critical piece to driving downloads.
Still, it is not the only factor. You’ll need to consider:
By understanding how these things work and how successful apps are leveraging them, you’ll be better positioned to build a profitable mobile business.
Don’t let this overwhelm you. Schedule a free demo and we’ll walk you through everything.
42matters tracks everything from app meta data, to rankings, to download estimates, to changes in meta information, to SDK usage, to App-ads.txt and more. If you would like to leverage our data into your own product, research or app industry analysis, it can be obtained via our API or File Dumps or our interactive App Market Explorer.
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