Eight smartphone or tablet games grossed over $ 1 billion in revenue, such as PUBG Mobile, Honor of kings Where Candy Crush Saga.
It is a booming market. According to analytics firm SensorTower, video games on smartphones and tablets are expected to total $ 89.6 billion in revenue for 2021, up 12.6% in one year. They will represent respectively 61% of the revenues of the Apple Store, or $ 52.3 billion, and 78% for the Google Play Store, with $ 37.3 billion.
This year, eight mobile video games have already passed the symbolic billion dollar revenue mark. They were only five last year. And as in 2020, two titles stand out from the crowd. It is first of all PUBG Mobile, entitled Game For Peace in China, which generated more than $ 2.8 billion in revenue in 2021. Its publisher Krafton now represents a capitalization of nearly $ 20 billion, after an IPO in South Korea this summer.
Games with a variety of universes
PUBG Mobile is a game of ” battle royale »: A hundred players compete in the same environment so that only one survivor remains at the end of the game. Another famous game is based on this principle, Fortnite, with 10 million daily players. The latter being banned in China, it has failed to exceed $ 1 billion in annual revenue.
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Tied with PUBG Mobile, Honor of kings garnered the same amount of revenue in 2021. This battles game is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which also owns the WeChat messaging app. On the third place of the podium is the action game Genshin Impact, launched in 2020, with $ 1.8 billion in revenue in 2021.
Its editor miHoYo has continued to produce numerous updates, adding new islands, characters, and features to keep players engaged. In September, the release of version 2.1 resulted in a five-fold increase in user spending week-over-week.
The “free-to-play” model
Other titles include the metaverse app Roblox ($ 1.3 billion), Master Corner (1.3 billion), Pokémon Go (1.2 billion). The latter, edited by Niantic , achieved its best performance, more than five years after its launch. Finally, Candy Crush Saga (1.2 billion) and Garena Free Fire (1.1 billion) complete this ranking.
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A ninth mobile game could also exceed $ 1 billion. This is the manga Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, developed by Cygames, which is approaching $ 965 million for this year, despite a launch last February and availability only in Japan.
All these games are based on a particular economic model, the ” free-to-play “. Thus, users can access the games for free but must pay bonuses or options to enrich them. For example, on Candy Crush Saga, it is possible to buy a ” beginner pack At 1.99 euros to advance more quickly in the levels. PUBG Mobile even offers a subscription of 10.49 euros per month to obtain benefits and receive 300 UC tokens, the currency of the application.
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