Meta’s Rick Kelley on what to expect for gaming in 2022
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Rick Kelley has a unique window on gaming trends as vice president of global gaming at Meta/Facebook. And so we asked him what to expect in gaming in 2022 at our second annual GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit. And he noted that some gaming trends are being pulled back down to Earth by gravity. I interviewed Kelley a year ago at our previous went, and now the vice president of global gaming at Meta came back to talk about the latest research Facebook Gaming has collected on gaming during COVID.
A year ago, Kelley said with some relief that millions of new gamers had come into gaming during the pandemic to play games in lieu of other activities. Those players stayed with their new gaming habit and helped mobile gaming grow to new heights. (App Annie said that mobile games grew 20% to $120 billion in 2021; Facebook’s own data will be released soon). He noted there are still about three billion people playing games.
“Compared to last year, many of those trends have really sustained,” he said. “But playing time and spending habits are two that have actually slipped back, not quite to pre pandemic levels, but certainly have retrenched since 2020,” Kelley said.
The volume of downloads are down about 10% year over year in part because people may have less disposable time than they did when they were in the initial lockdowns. A lot of games have been delayed, and perhaps some aren’t resonating with the market.
The 2nd Annual GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit and GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2
January 25 – 27, 2022
Game genres are shifting. Hypercasual is still the predominant in terms of volume of mobile
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