From an industry perspective, the world of mobile gaming has been quite intriguing over the past couple of years. So the question that naturally comes to everyone’s mind is: what’s next?

If anything, MENA mobile gaming has demonstrated its stealth and solidity in the face of uncertainty. The COVID pandemic has wrecked numerous industries across different lines of business, however, the mobile gaming industry has shown promising growth and continuous development.

In looking at the MENA mobile gaming industry’s life span up to this point, we can somewhat predict the future trajectory of its development. As such, this blog post will give you a quick peek into what we can expect for the MENA mobile gaming industry in 2022.

First off, it’s worth noting that the MENA region makes up about 25% of the global online gaming community. When we look at the MENA gaming community’s enthusiasm paired with the region’s rising rates of smartphone penetration, online infrastructure, and spending power, the region makes for a powerful market, to say the least. 

The widespread growth of the MENA mobile gaming market over the past couple of years due to stay-at-home orders is as promising as it is apparent. Users have turned to mobile games as a means of social connection with each other, so the community has become stronger. The market is expected to almost triple in size over the coming years, which would make 2022 a high-growth year for the mobile gaming industry, over which we can expect numbers to climb and rates to peak. 

From a numbers perspective, we can expect the MENA mobile gaming industry to hit an estimated value of $4.4 billion. Comparing this figure to 5 years ago, we see that the industry has tripled in market value. With the KSA and UAE generating hundreds of millions of dollars in gaming revenue, we can expect the MENA’s mobile gaming spending patterns to keep growing.

With that said, we can expect more investments to pour into the MENA gaming market over the next year. As the world’s most promising market in terms of potential revenue, the MENA mobile gaming industry is gaining more and more momentum as an investment opportunity. The potential for high returns is brimming at the surface of the MENA pond – with a largely untapped market, much of the opportunity is ripe for the taking, and investors from all over are taking notice. 

As the MENA mobile gaming industry continues to grow as a whole, we can expect more demand for Arabic content. Naturally, we’ll definitely experience a spike in Arabic content in general, including Arabic mobile games. This means that over the course of 2022 we’ll see increased localization efforts coming in to meet that demand. If you’re interested in localizing your mobile game for the MENA region, Tamatem Games is the ideal partner.