There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through in the mobile games business. Our regular data digest column breaks it all down into digestible chunks.
Read on for the numbers you need to know about, minus the fluff.
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Call of Duty Mobile at 5: ~$1.7bn earned, ~390m downloads
Call of Duty Mobile recently celebrated its fifth birthday, so we had a look at the big-name shooter’s stats in Appmagic.
Estimates suggest the game has generated Activision and co-developer Tencent nearly $1.7bn to date, or $1.68bn to be more precise. Monthly earnings are spiky based on the game’s season structure, but recently passed over $30m in both July and August, while last month, revenue dropped to around $21m. Remember, these estimates do not include Apple and Google’s 30% cut.
Total lifetime downloads are nearly 390m, and on a monthly basis they range between 3-4.5m.
Zenless Zone Zero hits $150m
Pocketgamer.biz has been reporting on Appmagic estimates too, and noted this week that Hoyoverse’s latest launch has now passed $150m in earnings, minus platform fees.
But the site also noted that Hoyoverse may be seeing diminishing returns from its third big gacha RPG launch. While ZZZ took less than three months to hit $150m, it reached the milestone much more slowly than Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, which had reached $572m and $499m in revenue respectively three months after launch.
Squad Busters by the numbers
Deconstructor of Fun’s comprehensive look at how Squad Busters’ launch compares to Brawl Stars shows Supercell’s latest launch lagging behind the firm’s previous global launch.
When launches are aligned, the above chart from Sensor Tower shows Squad Busters performing far below Brawl Stars in terms of revenue. It’s also a tough comparison in terms of estimated downloads, DAU and revenue per download.
Sensor Tower’s revenue estimates rank Squad Busters as the fifth biggest Supercell game for September, behind Hay Day by some distance:
- Brawl Stars: $68.2m
- Clash of Clans: $24m
- Clash Royale: $15.4m
- Hay Day: $11.8m
- Squad Busters: $6.7m
- Boom Beach: $992k
Gaming time in Southeast Asia is up 53% in 2024
The amount of time spent gaming in Southeast Asia has risen sharply in 2024, with Niko Partners reporting a 53.2% year-over-year increase across six key markets.
The research firm’s SEA-6 Gamer Behaviour and Market Insights Report – which covers Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – also found that esports remains a key market growth driver in the region.
55% of SEA-6 gamers play esports games, watch and/or compete in esports tournaments, and a majority of the top 10 games for both mobile and PC are esports-focused titles.
30% of female gamers make game-related purchases compared to 22% of male gamers, Niko said. Digital wallets are the most popular payment method for players, with over 75% using them to buy games.
Over 50% of gamers in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam prefer to play titles which are translated over ones that aren’t localised. This is less of a priority in other SEA-6 markets, where English proficiency is more widespread.
Balatro mobile passes $500k in five days
As we reported earlier this week, Playstack and indie dev LocalThunk quickly passed $500k in earnings from the $9.99 port of indie hit Balatro, and that’s not including the revenue it received from Apple for the port and ongoing engagement.
As of today, Appmagic says the game has now passed $656k.
Battlegrounds Mobile India tops 27m in revenue this year
Battlegrounds Mobile India generated 27.22m in revenue during the first eight months of 2024, according to figures from data firm Apptica, reported by GamingonPhone.
Average daily revenue for Krafton’s game between January and August came in at $105,500, with the Google Play version accounting for 84% of its total earnings.
The battle royale title was downloaded 34.65m times during the tracking period, with the Android version making up 94% of total installs. 78% of players were male, and the average session duration was 10m 47s.
FAU-G: Domination hits 1m pre-registrations in record time
Multiplayer first-person shooter FAU-G: Domination has become the fastest game to hit 1m pre-registrations for Nazara Publishing.
The Android version of the game reached the milestone in under three weeks, with iOS pre-registration scheduled to open soon. Players who pre-register will receive a limited edition set of in-game cosmetics inspired by India’s national animal, the tiger.
