Redfinger | Current Situation and Development of Philippine Mobile Gaming Market

The latest joint report released by Google, Temasek and Bain&Company shows that the growth of the six top digital economies in Southeast Asia in 2022 is faster than expected. In 2021, the scale of the digital economy market in Southeast Asia has reached 174 billion dollars, and is expected to exceed 360 billion dollars in 2025. By 2030, this number will grow rapidly to a staggering $1 trillion.

In addition, the IMF has predicted that the GDP growth rate of Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia will exceed that of most countries in the world from 2022 to 2024. In this sense, let’s quickly understand the Philippine market, games, game publishers and payment methods to grasp the development trend of mobile game industry.

Philippines’ Market Status quo Overview 

It is estimated that the total population of the Philippines is about 106 million, covering an area of 290000 square kilometers, and the gross domestic product in 2019 is about US $330.9 billion. Because of the large income gap in this country, the per capita GDP is not so high. In this case, despite the recent rapid economic growth, the World Bank listed the country as a low – and middle-income country.

The country has more than 60% of young people over the age of 16. Internet penetration is about 60%, while smartphone penetration is about 45%. The English penetration rate in the Philippines is 92.3%. Due to the widespread development of local Internet technology in the Philippines, the Philippine market relies on game-related outsourcing all the year round, which makes the local people more critical of game graphics and quality. Since about one third of local mobile Internet users are students and unemployed, users prefer to download applications and games for free rather than paid games.

Mobile Games in the Philippines

Mobile Legends ranks first and third in the Philippine mobile game download list and best-selling list respectively. Mobile Legends is a 5-to-5 MOBA mobile game, which drew on the playing methods of games such as “League of Legends” and landed in the Southeast Asian market as early as September 2016. Mobile Legends and League of Legends have launched fierce competition in the Philippines and the whole Southeast Asian market, and are in an advantage from the current situation. In the Philippines, Mobile Legends organized an E-sports event called Mobile Legends MPL Philippines. The weekly bonus pool of this event is 100000 dollars, and the final is scheduled to be held at the end of June.

Axie Infinity is a 3V3 online card game developed by Sky Mavis, a Vietnamese game company, which fights by manipulating a small monster named Axis and releasing card skills. There are two kinds of tokens in the game – AXS (Axie Infinity) and SLP (Small Love Potion). Unlike the closed token system of traditional games, AXS and SLP follow the ERC-20 rule, which makes AXS and SLP exchangeable. AXS and SLP tokens can be directly exchanged for other tokens through the flow pool of decentralized exchanges. This makes these two kinds of tokens realizable assets.

Genshin Impact is a very interesting role-playing game. Players can team up with friends in the game and take risks in the game world together. Players can freely choose their own roles in the game. There are many adventure modes in the game. Players can choose a person to challenge the wilderness, or play with friends to show their cooperation and cooperation ability with friends. In the Philippines mobile gaming market, MMO, RPG and strategic mobile games are also popular because local players have been affected by many similar games in the past decade.

Mobile games, such as Dragon Nest M and Lineage 2: Revolution, adapted from popular Korean PC games, have washed many players in the Philippines. Their Korean art style and PvP play method are very suitable for the preferences of Philippine players. Several other MMORPGs such as War of Rings, Daybreak Origins and Legacy of Discord have also been successful in the Philippine market. In addition, the RTS mobile game “Lords Mobile” developed by IGG is also popular with many Filipino players.

As a virtual Android system, redfinger cloud phone enables you to have another Android phone on one device. When running on ECS, redfinger hardly needs data, storage and battery power of your own device. With this Android simulator, you can run your game freely on the cloud. In addition, with only one redfinger account, you can manage any number of cloud phones to meet your multitask needs. For example, like enjoying Lineage 2: Revolution with redfinger cloud phone.

Compared with the other five countries in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam), the maturity of the development of the Philippine game market is relatively low. However, with the gradual stability of the political situation in the Philippines, the economic development and the increasing penetration of smart phones, the current Philippine game market is developing rapidly, and the size of the mobile game market in the Philippines has reached 300 million dollars in 2020.

Game Publishers in the Philippines

Of all 176291 game publishers, more than 425 Philippine publishers are on Google Play. Rocket Game Studio ranks first among the largest game publishers in the Philippines. They have 140 mobile games, with a total download of more than 260.39 million. After Rocket Game Studio, Monstronauts Co., Ltd., founded in 2015, developed and published Cooking Adventures, Potion Punch, Rowan McPaddles: River Rush, etc. They have three mobile games, with a total download of more than 17.37 million times.

Duterte Firing Crime 2, Manok Na Pula – Online, Train to Gensan, and Police Vs Zombies were developed by TATAY, and the total downloads of five mobile games exceeded 16.76 million. In addition, there are a series of game publishers, such as Big Giant Games, Ranida Games, TripSoft Global, Remy Games, etc.

Frequently-used Payment Methods in the Philippines

At present, GCASH has more than 30 million users. Users can deposit, recharge, transfer, online shopping, etc. through GCASH account. In 2017, GCASH became the largest electronic wallet in the Philippines.

Dragonpay was founded in 2010, covering more than 4000 banks and 2000 offline payment sites. By using payment, consumers can complete payment through online banking, bank counters and automatic teller machines. Due to the low penetration rate of PayPal in developing countries such as the Philippines, Dragonpay, as an alternative online payment method, provides higher security and convenience than traditional credit cards.

As the electronic wallet payment under Grab, the largest taxi software in Southeast Asia, GrabPay has about 115 million users. Payment methods can be used for online shopping, taxi payment, mobile phone recharging, etc. Currently, GrabPay can be used in countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Dragonpay was founded in 2010, covering more than 4000 banks and 2000 offline payment sites. By using payment, consumers can complete payment through online banking, bank counters and automatic teller machines. Due to the low penetration rate of PayPal in developing countries such as the Philippines, Dragonpay, as an alternative online payment method, provides higher security and convenience than traditional credit cards.