As 2024 comes to a close, Supersonic’s annual SuperMonday wrap-up episode brought together three mobile gaming experts to reflect on the huge shifts transforming the games industry.
Watch the video here or read on to get a summary of the insights from Supersonic’s Igor Bereslavski, VP of Revenue, Guy Agiv, Director of Product Design, and Samantha Benjamin, Director of Growth, into the trends that changed the game in 2024 and are shaping 2025.
What we got up to in 2024
2024 was a big year for Supersonic. We published hybrid-casual hits like Trash Tycoon, Pick me Up, and Park Match, Supersonic reached 5.7 billion downloads worldwide*, and engaged over 190 million monthly active users*.
Supersonic continued to invest in its technology and R&D, with new additions to our platform like our Top Creatives Library and Game Idea Generator. Tools designed to help you make better hybrid games faster.
The state of the market
Last year, the mobile gaming market faced some pretty big challenges. A combination of global economic factors, new regulations, and technological advancements resulted in a super competitive landscape. This led to a rise in CPI and UA costs, with a noticeable decline in hyper-casual game downloads.
In response, many studios and devs diversified their monetization approaches - and as a consequence, their game design. More games are now incorporating both IAP and IAA in their monetization, requiring deeper content and economies. This is reflected in the rise of hybrid-casual games.
How game design changed in 2024
As mentioned, game design has had to adapt to prioritize hybrid monetization from the start. As a result, an important part of game design has become creating pressure points to incentivize IAP conversions and adding more complexity with added meta layers to engage players longer. That means longer development times as the focus moves to deeper content that incentivizes players to engage with rewards videos and IAP, fine-tuning monetization, and balancing the economy.
Genres that worked especially well with this new model are puzzles and simulation games, since they’re able to offer both the challenge and meta layers that incentivize players to engage with IAP and rewarded ads.
The new monetization model
Hybrid-casual is moving away from hyper-casual’s heavy reliance on interstitial IAA, and instead a balanced mix between IAP, rewarded ads, IAA, and even sometimes subscription models (offering a premium experience without ads for paid subscribers).
Despite the rising cost of CPI in 2024, ad monetization is still highly relevant - even within hybrid-casual games. Effective revenue generation for both hyper and hybrid-casual games still rely on a strong foundation of IAA.
Looking forward
2025 will likely continue to see an emphasis on retaining existing users and optimizing their LTV. This will probably mean a bigger focus on liveops to engage players for the long term and generate revenue. As a result, puzzle and idle simulation games are likely to continue to be at the top, with jam puzzles being the top-performing subgenre. We’re also keeping our eye on the tower defense genre, as we’re seeing some of these titles that show strong potential.
A new trend we expect will be the rise of new platforms, like TikTok, with more HTML5 games being created so developers can find new opportunities to create profitable hits and a new revenue stream from their games.
On the UA side, if there’s one thing you can be certain of, it's change. Expect more diversification on new channels like CTV and influencer campaigns as well as an increasing reliance on cost-efficient optimizations to drive better ROAS.
That being said, it’s hard to tell the future, but if there’s one thing we know for sure it’s that we’ll love making hit games with our partners in the year ahead. We look forward to another year of bringing joy to millions with you in 2025!
*As of September 2024
*Between the months of January 2024 and October 2024
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