There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through in the mobile games business. Our regular data digest column breaks it all down into digestible chunks. Read on for the numbers you need to know about minus the fluff.
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Dungeon & Fighter Mobile’s $270m debut month
The newly released DnF Mobile made $270m during its first month in China. That’s according to Bloomberg – citing Sensor Tower data – which reports that the RPG made twice as much revenue as the second best-performing game, Honor of Kings.
Niko Partners analyst Xiaofeng Zeng estimates that the game could make between 15bn yuan ($2.1bn) and 18bn yuan ($2.5bn) in 2024.
Squad Busters hits $28m in three weeks
PocketGamer.biz got some Sensor Tower estimates that suggest Supercell’s latest launch reached $28m in total player spend in its first three weeks on the market, from 44.3m installs to date.
We’ve been tracking this one closely too, as you’ve probably noticed. As we’ve reported previously, Squad Busters reached 30m downloads within its first week, and earned around $10m in its first full week of global release, according to several data sources.
Sensor Tower’s State of Gaming report
Mobile games revenue dropped by 2% overall during 2023 to $53bn, but casual genres found success where others did not. That’s according to Sensor Tower’s State of Gaming 2024 report, which shows that these genres saw revenue rise 8% year-on-year, while hybridcasual rose 30%, though still isn’t bringing in a huge amount of revenue. Midcore saw a 9% drop year-on-year, too.
Sensor Tower also calls out Monopoly Go helping the casino genre see an 18% increase in revenue year-on-year, while the puzzle category rose 10% off the back of games such as Candy Crush Saga and Gardenscapes.
Meanwhile, downloads dipped 10% to 40bn in 2023. Despite the hypercasual genre accounting for 37% of all downloads in 2023, it was responsible for just 3% of revenue for the year.
East Asia games market made $30bn in 2023
Niko Partners reports that the East Asian games market – Japan and Korea – raked in revenue of $30.1bn in 2023.
That’s a 1% increase year-on-year, but the company forecasts that there will be a 2.9% dip for 2024. Mobile is the biggest platform in the region, accounting for 68.4% of revenue in 2023.
Summoner’s War hits $3bn for its 10th anniversary
Summoner’s War has generated almost $3bn in revenue since its debut back in 2014, according to developer Com2us.
The franchise also boasts over 220m downloads to date. Around 90% of Summoner’s War revenue – about $2.7bn – came from outside of South Korea. The biggest region for revenue was Asia at 33.9%, while the Americas come a close second with 32.2%.
12% of Roblox players only play on mobile
Only 12% of Roblox’s users play the game exclusively on mobile. That’s according to a new report from Game Analytics, which claims that 47% of the platform’s users play on both mobile and PC. This differs from Roblox’s official figures, which claim that mobile accounts for 78% of the game’s user base.
Stillfront Group completes $11.6m stock buyback
Sweden’s Stillfront Group has bought back SEK 122m ($11.6m) worth of its own stock, over 9.8m shares, between May 15 and June 20. The company has done SEK 182m ($17.3m) worth of buybacks during 2024 to date.
Meanwhile, Game Analytics’ research shows that over half of Roblox’s paying users spent less than $1 per year, while the 95 percentile of paying users spent $15.23 on average.
