What is a good-earning strategy in the USA? How many subgenres of strategies are there? What is the number of downloads per month for Clash Royale? We answer all the questions in the new material about the American mobile games market.
Sega and SensorTower have published a big report U.S. Mobile Gaming Trends: 2016. In it, they analyze in detail how the mobile games market has changed in the United States over the past year.
We have already published the first part of the report in Russian. In it, we looked at general trends. In this publication, we are looking at only one genre – strategies.
Mobile Strategies and Money
Frituplay strategies are one of the highest-grossing genres on mobile. The figures from Sega and SensorTower confirm this once again.
Over the past year alone, mobile strategies exclusively in the United States earned $2.1 billion.
For comparison: for the whole of last year, all games in America earned $6.6 billion.
Trends
It is still impossible to say how much the strategy market has grown in 2016 based on the data from the report. We need data on revenue for the year before last.
However, the difference in earnings between the first and fourth quarters of one year is 25%.
Genre Downloads and Revenue (USA, January – December 2016)
A noteworthy project for Sega and SensorTower is a strategy that earns more than $250,000 per month from the United States.
There are many such strategies in the USA and their number continues to grow. At the beginning of 2016, there were 37 of them, at the end of it – already 52.
With the increase in the number of privileged projects, the average number of downloads per successful title fell from 331 thousand to 226 thousand.
Along with this metric, the median revenue of each product decreased – from $736 thousand at the beginning of the year to $497 thousand at the end.
Facts about the strategy genreSubgenres
The Sega strategy genre and SensorTower in the study are divided into eight subgenres:
- March Battle (Game of War, Mobile Strike)
- Build Battle (Clash of Clans, Boom Beach)
- Summon Battle (Clash Royale, Paladog, Line Ranger)
- Card Battle (Hearthstone, Animation Throwdown, PVZ Heroes)
- Breed Battle (Dragon City, Monster Legends Mobile)
- Tower Defense (Bloons TD 5, Kingdom Rush)
- Lane Battle (Zombies, Heavenstrike)
- General Strategy (all other types of strategy games)
The March Battle, Build Battle and Summon Battle subgenres account for 95% of all earnings within the genre. For the fourth quarter of 2016, out of 52 strategies earning more than $250,000 per month, 42 titles belonged to these three.
Income of strategies by sub-genre (USA, 2016)Interesting facts about mobile strategies
Last July, there was a significant drawdown in income for all strategic sub-genres. Analysts associate it with the release of Pokémon GO. His appearance did not affect other genres. Sega and SensorTower are sure that the majority of the paying audience of Pokémon GO are gamers in strategy.
Income dynamics of strategies by sub-genre (USA, 2016)
Strategies live a long time.
$422.8 million of the above-mentioned $2.1 billion was brought to the general genre piggy bank by projects released five years ago – in 2012. The 2013 Games accounted for $614.4 million.
Revenue dynamics of strategies by year of release (USA, 2016)
The top five richest strategy games in the United States do not raise questions: all these names are well known.
Another thing deserves attention: the indicated amounts. Game of War, which heads the rating, managed to earn $0.5 billion in a year.
Top Five Most Earning Strategies (USA, 2016)
Also of interest is the top new games in the strategy genre and the assessment of their monthly downloads and earnings.
For example, Clash Royale, with monthly earnings of $ 38 million, is downloaded about 1.4 million times a month.
The five most earning strategies released in 2016 (USA, 2016)Instead of a conclusion
The genre of strategy games is one of the most interesting from a commercial point of view, but also one of the most difficult in terms of entering the market.
Year by year, competition within the segment is growing, while the leaders are not going to leave.
Not only traffic prices are rising, but also production costs, as new projects are trying to outdo each other in graphics, which were often conditional initially within the genre.
Experiments within niches remain cautious and some players prefer to do without them altogether, cloning their own products.
In the next publication we will tell you about slots and casinos.
Source: U.S. Mobile Gaming Trends: 2016