China's gaming industry thrives in H1

China's gaming industry has seen steady growth in the first half of the year, with mini-games keeping soaring remarkably in revenue, according to a report released Thursday during the China Digital Entertainment Congress 2024 in Shanghai.

China's game users and actual sales of the domestic game market has expanded steadily in the first half year. By the end of June, the China has 674 million game users. From January to June, the sales volume of China's domestic gaming market totaled 147.27 billion yuan ($20.37 billion), up 2.08 percent year-on-year, said the report.

Mobile games still contributed the major 73 percent to the total domestic sales over the six-month period, amounting to 107.58 billion yuan, slightly rising 0.76 percent year-on-year. Client games continue to grow its portion in sales to 33.76 billion yuan, taking up 22.93 percent of the total. And table games kept shrinking, recording a sales decline of 1.88 percent year-on-year to 2.34 billion yuan, shows the report.

Mini-games, mostly referring to lighter and smaller games based on mini-programs, became the highlight in the report. During H1, mini-games saw a total revenue of over 16.6 billion yuan ($2.29 billion), surging 60.5 percent year-on-year. In-app purchases contributed about 9.1 billion yuan to the total revenue, and advertisements added up 7.5 billion yuan to the total, growing 81.56 percent and 40.74 percent respectively, according to Zhang Yijun, first vice-chairman of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.

Zhang pointed out that mini-games have seen rapid growth for three consecutive years, and the in-app purchases are steadily making increasing contribution to the revenue.

Chinese self-developed games have also seen steady growth in actual sales in overseas markets, recording $8.55 billion in H1, up 4.24 percent year-on-year. United States, Japan and South Korea continue to be the main overseas market for Chinese mobile games, said the report.

The congress is part of the 21st China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference, or China Joy. The expo will run from Friday to Monday in Shanghai.