With 2022 coming to a close last month, mobile games across the market sought to end the year on a high note with major updates, massive collaborations and plenty of seasonal events capitalizing on the hype around Christmas, New Year, and the World Cup.
December was also a major month for music events, the highlight being Aurora’s concert in thatgamecompany’s Sky: Children of the Light, which dazzled over 1.6m players worldwide with an interactive concert experience that lasted over 45 minutes. This wasn’t the only musical crossover; Marvel Snap’s first-ever collaboration event featured an official song and animated music video with Martin Garrix and JVKE.
Speaking of card games, Genshin Impact added one called Genius Invocation, designed primarily to engage its most advanced players after finishing the main storyline. Diablo Immortal also introduced more content designed to keep players engaged after completing the main story with the addition of its first post-launch area, Stormpoint, as part of the Terror’s Tide update.
Elsewhere, several mobile games, including Lotsa Slots, EverMerge, overhauled their monetization strategies, but the biggest change was Brawl Stars, which completely removed all gachas from the game and replaced them with a new system called Starr Road. With more legislation on loot boxes looming, will we see more mobile studios say goodbye to gachas in 2023?
You’ll find more information on the major mobile game updates and collaborations in December – as well as plenty of inspiration for seasonal events from Christmas and New Year – below.
US Market Overview
Christmas came early for Genshin Impact players last month with the permanent addition of a turn-based TCG minigame, Genius Invocation, primarily designed for advanced players as endgame content. The game is played with eight card decks, consisting of three character cards and five support cards – players receive their first deck as part of the tutorial. Players can acquire further character cards by defeating certain NPCs in a duel while also completing certain objectives during the match. Players can also duel random NPCs in the open world, who may reward cards of both types when beaten.
There was also another gift in the form of 800 free Primogems, which served as a thank-you to those who voted for Genshin Impact to win the Player’s Choice Award at The Game Awards. We suspect many players opted to use these to wish for one of the banner gachas’ newly added characters, Wanderer and Faruzan.