Which genres are responsible for most of the earnings and downloads of the mobile games market, — said Maxim Samorukov, founder of AppMagic.
Maxim Samorukov
Data and methodology
In preparing the study, we studied the 1,000 most downloaded games and the 1,000 highest-grossing games over the past 30 days. This approach allowed us to focus our work exclusively on successful titles.
We have divided the collections by region, based on the local priorities of publishers. The western selection of top projects (Tier-1 West) includes games published in the USA, Great Britain, Canada, Germany and France. The eastern selection of top projects (Tier-1 East) included hits from China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
LTV Analysis
For this part of the study, we took only those genres that are represented by 20 or more games.
- Each circle on the chart is one game.
- The abscissa axis reflects the LTV of the games (in US dollars).
- LTV is shown for the entire life of the game, not for six months or a year.
- Our LTV estimate takes into account only IAP.
- The value of each circle on the graph is determined by the revenue from the IAP for the last three months and the number of downloads for the same three months.
Using these metrics, we expressed the volume of downloads and revenue in one chart. We consider this approach to be exhaustive and suitable for practical work.
We have separated LTV for iOS and Android, because in some cases they are seriously different.
The highest – grossing genres in the West
The highest-grossing genres in Asia
One of the main conclusions that can be drawn from studying these charts is that there are many more games with high LTV in the Asian market.
Genres with high LTV may seem attractive (for development). However, most box office games have a large budget. There is a lot of content, mechanics, high-end graphics in such titles, top technologies were used in their development. Most novice teams are not able to compete on the same field with them, because they cannot offer a comparable level of quality. In other words, a high LTV in a particular genre should not be considered as an obvious reason to choose it for a future game.
Deviating values
We excluded from the charts just above the games that showed abnormal LTV values, for two reasons:
- in order not to lengthen the abscissa axis;
- to make the graph easier to read.
At the same time, we found more than 20 titles whose LTV is above $100. All these exceptions are from Tier-1 East. Let’s note the most outstanding ones.
Fate/Grand Order
This cash-based turn-based RPG has a whopping LTV: $430 in Asia. 95% of the revenue comes from Japan. To date, the game has earned $3.3 billion on 9 million downloads.
Lineage M
The LTV of the mobile version of the legendary desktop Lineage exceeds $220. 99% of the money the game earns in South Korea. Since its release in June 2017, its box office has reached $1.5 billion.
Chaos King (乱世王者)
This is a 4X strategy launched exclusively in China so far. The LTV of the game is at $185. In total, the title has already earned $ 370 million.
Dynamics of popularity of genres on the market
In this section of the study, we will look at how genres have divided the mobile games market over the past five years (from January 1, 2015 to January 1, 2020). We remind you that we are talking exclusively about revenue from IAP.
Both graphs show the dynamics of the revenue share of mobile genres in the West
We see that the share of RTS titles (by them AppMagic means projects in the spirit of Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Plants Vs. Zombies, and so on) has been steadily falling in recent years. The main reason is the decline in the popularity of Supercell games.
It is also worth noting the appearance in 2018 among the box office genres of third-person shooters (TPS). PUBG and Fortnite became the growth driver of the genre.
Both graphs show the dynamics of the revenue share of mobile genres in Asia
In Asia in recent years, RTS as a genre has finally stopped earning. But the genre of racing arcade games has gained wide popularity and commercial success, which continues to grow rapidly today. There are three main projects in the niche:
Crazyracing Kartrider (跑跑卡丁车官方竞速版)
This is a mobile version of the PC game of the same name released by Tencent, which is very popular in South Korea, where Nexon regularly holds esports tournaments with large prize money on it.
Mario Kart Tour
The central mobile release of Nintendo and DeNA in September last year. On the day of release, the game was downloaded more than 20 million times.
Asphalt 9
The Chinese version of the French blockbuster from Gameloft. In the Middle Kingdom, Tencent is engaged in operating the game.
95% of all revenue in the MOBA genre is accounted for by a single title Honor of Kings (王)). This game is also published by Tencent, like most other box office Chinese blockbusters. Only in China, the iOS version of the game has earned $5 billion to date.
Moving on to downloads.
Both graphs show the dynamics of the share of downloads of mobile genres in the West
A lone gray splash in the middle of 2016 is the release of Pokémon Go.
As for the peak in the genre of first-person shooters at the end of 2019, it is caused by the appearance of Call of Duty: Mobile.
The increase in downloads of hyper—casual games in the spring of 2019 is the result of the simultaneous appearance of several strong projects in the genre at once. However, the drop in downloads marks the end of the era of hyper-casual games.
There is a common point of view that idle games are a new hyper-casual. But today we see that this genre is not even in the top 15 most popular.
Both graphs show the dynamics of the share of downloads of mobile genres in Asia
The nature of genre behavior in Asia is very dynamic. Genres here quickly reach peak values, and then disappear in just a few years. The reason is that here genres “appear on the radar” solely thanks to one or two projects.
For example, Honor of Kings, which we mentioned just above, is almost alone responsible for the MOBA red zone on the chart. PUBG is fully responsible for the category of third-person shooters. The azure area of racing arcades is closed by only three projects, which we also talked about a little earlier.
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The original material in English can be found at this link.