China-headquartered game publishers continued to see steady global expansion in the first half of this year as overseas players spent more on Chinese games, an industrial report showed.

Their share of consumer spending in overseas markets reached 16 percent in H1, surging by 60 percent compared with H1 2017, according to a report released by global app market data provider App Annie and Google, citing data from the iOS App Store and Google Play.

The United States led consumer spending on Chinese games during this period, while Southeast Asia reported the highest number of downloads of Chinese games.

The overseas download growth of Chinese games is likely to stagnate, while consumer spending poses huge growth potential, especially in developed markets as local consumers possess strong spending power, according to Dai Bin, head of the greater China region at App Annie.

China-based game publishers' share of consumer spending in individual developed markets was less than 20 percent in H1, but was growing at a high speed. In emerging markets, they enjoy a large share of the market, with India reporting the highest increase of 110 percent, followed by Russia, the report showed.

Most consumer spending on Chinese games comes from hardcore games, while recently there has been an increase in adventure game purchases, according to the report.

Self-developed games reach $5.6 bln in H1

In the first half of 2019, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in the overseas market increased 20.2 percent to reach 5.57 billion U.S. dollars, higher than the growth rate of the sales in the domestic market, said the game publishing working committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.

Role-playing, strategy and multiplayer games were among the most popular in the overseas market, accounting for 83 percent of the total overseas revenue, the report said.

"In 2018, the overseas sales revenue of China's game industry reached 9.59 billion U.S. dollars, making the country one of the largest exporters of games," said Sun Shoushan, chairman of the association.

Currently, Europe, the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea are the main target markets for China's self-developed games. Users in these regions typically have high requirements for game quality, which also proves the improvement of China's game products, according to a report released in late July by JoyNews Corporation.