The Japan Online Game Association (JOGA) recently published a study of Japan’s mobile game market in 2024. As reported by Famitsu, JOGA’s report features various survey data (based on developer and player surveys) concerning online mobile games – including the average costs of management services per game, average development costs, AI usage, and insights on most the effective advertising and promotion methods.
While it’s a known fact that development costs have been on the rise throughout the game industry, the study shows that the average development budget in Japan in 2024 was 4.7 times greater compared to 10 years ago. Apparently, the average development budget came up to a whopping 492 million yen (roughly 3.3 million USD) per mobile game. Similarly, annual advertising and promotion expenses have increased fourfold over the same period, with the average advertisement and promotion expenses per company (not per game) reaching 1.35 billion yen (roughly 9.2 million USD).
JOGA also reports that the usage of AI tools in game development is skyrocketing.
According to the survey, aside from 59% of mobile developers in Japan using ChatGPT, 53% of them admitted to using GitHub Copilot and Whisper, with 43% using Adobe Firefly. Note that these numbers are due to developers possibly using multiple AI tools for their work. Moreover, around 70% of the surveyed game companies stated that the business fields in which they want AI to carry out work were “content planning,” “user preference analysis” and “user behavior prediction.”
On the other hand, around 26.5% of surveyed players expressed concern about games developed with the assistance of AI tools, saying that “AI-assisted games could end up infringing copyrights.” Furthermore, 26.4% of gamers stated that with increased usage of AI tools for development, there may end up being “too many same-looking games” on the market.
