Mobile card battlers are on the rise right now. According to Sensor Tower, they became the fastest growing category in the strategy genre in the second quarter. And the highest-grossing title of the first half of the year turned out to be Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.The main thing from the report
In the second quarter, downloads of card battlers increased by 23% compared to the previous quarter.
- The main drivers of growth were Magic: The Gathering Arena and Mighty Party.Prior to that, a similar jump in downloads was observed in the third quarter of 2019.
- It was associated with the release of the autobattlers Auto Chess and Chess Rush, which generated 5 million downloads each during the quarter.Sensor Tower notes that the market for card battles is still relatively small compared to MOBA and 4X strategies.
- However, this category in the second quarter turned out to be almost the only one in the genre that showed a strong increase in downloads.Dynamics of downloads of mobile strategy subgenres (from the 1st quarter of 2019 to the 2nd quarter of 2021)
Initially, card battles were popular in Asia.
- In 2019, Japan accounted for 43% of the total revenue of games of this subgenre, and China accounted for 14%. However, today the situation has changed a lot. In the second quarter of 2021, the United States accounted for 27% of all card buttler revenues, while Japan’s share fell to 29%.Based on the results of the first six months of 2021, Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Duel Links turned out to be the undisputed leader in the subgenre. The game earned the most in Japan and the USA — 33% and 27% of all revenue, respectively.Revenue Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Duel Links for six months amounted to $110 million. Hearthstone is in second place with a big gap — a little more than $ 40 million. Mighty Party, WWE SuperCard and Shadowverse are also in the top 5 highest-grossing card battles.
The highest-grossing card battles for the first half of 2021