Ekaterina Bespyatova

GameRefinery: 56% of the American box office of iOS strategies goes to Chinese developers

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The third highest-grossing genre in the American App Store is strategy. They account for 13% of the revenue of the regional store. However, more than half of the revenue collected by iOS strategies in the States goes to China. The analytical company GameRefinery told about this in its latest report.

The main conclusions of the study:

  • mobile strategies are one of the most popular genres in Japan, China and the USA. However, the annual revenue of some top iOS games is falling today;
  • in the top 200 highest-grossing strategies, 67% of titles were published at least two years ago;
  • The most popular subgenre of strategies is 4X strategies. However, games of this subgenre increasingly include elements from other genres.

The situation on the markets in China, Japan and the USA in the second quarter of 2020:

  • Today, strategies are the third largest revenue genre in the iOS market in the United States. These games are responsible for 13% ($182.3 million) of the entire App Store box office in the USA;
  • In Japan, strategies are responsible for 8% ($81.2 million) of local iOS revenue, in China — for 29% ($549.3 million).

  • strategies is the only mobile genre on the iOS market in the USA, most of the revenue of which goes to companies from China (56%). In addition, three quarters of the revenue of the 4X strategy subgenre also goes to the “Celestial Empire”.

  • the most popular subgenre of strategies is 4X strategies (here and further we are talking about iOS in the USA). This subgenre receives 68% of all revenue among iOS strategies in the USA. In second place is Build & Battle (20% of revenue). Then there are tactical battles (7%).Multiplayer battle arenas complete the top four (5%).

Top 10 highest-grossing strategies on iOS (USA):

1) Clash of Clans;
2) Rise of Kingdoms;
3) Game of Thrones: Conquest;
4) Clash Royale;
5) State of Survival: Zombie War;
6) Lords Mobile: Kingdom War;
7) Guns of Glory: Conquer Empires;
8) King of Avalon: Dragon Warfare;
9) Last Shelter: Survival;
10) Mafia City: War of Underworld.

  • only one game from the list — State of Survival — has revenue growth in the third quarter of 2020 (+$241 thousand). The rest of the titles showed a drop in sales;
  • Eight of the top ten titles belong to the 4X strategy subgenre. The other two are Build & Battle (Clash of Clans) and tactical battler (Clash Royale). Both belong to the Finnish developer Supercell.Hybrid games — a new way to success

  • The iOS strategy market in the US is crowded, with most of the box office games released at least a couple of years ago. Modern developers have to experiment with the strategy genre and add something new to it in order to break into the top. This is how hybrid 4X strategies appeared;
  • the success of this approach is confirmed by the “new stars”. According to the GameRefinery classification, “new stars” are recently released mobile titles that already occupy places in the top box office games;

  • Five of the six “new stars” are just made in the subgenre of hybrid 4X strategies. Only the Brawl Stars title does not apply to them. For example, there was a place for RPG in State of Survival, and Age of Z contains Tower Defense mode;
  • GameRefinery suggests that the trend of creating hybrid 4X strategies will only strengthen against the background of the new IDFA policy on iOS.

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