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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Honor of Kings tops 100m DAU (again)
Tencent’s colossal MOBA Honor of Kings surpassed 100m daily active on October 26, according to Daniel Ahmad, director of research and insights at Niko Partners.
It’s the second time Tencent’s monster MOBA has hit the milestone, having also been the first game to do so in November 2020. While the vast majority of its players are Chinese, Honor of Kings had a strong global launch this summer.
Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival hit record monthly earnings
4X strategy games Last War: Survival and Whiteout Survival each generated record earnings in September, according to figures from Appmagic.
Last month, both titles broke into the global top five games by revenue, with Last War raking in $105m and Whiteout Survival $95m.
Appmagic’s report takes a deep dive into the strategies being used by 4X strategy game makers to attract a broader audience to the genre, retain players and enhance monetisation, using this year’s genre leaders to illustrate its points.
It notes that in 2023, 4X strategy games generated $5.8bn in worldwide IAP revenue, accounting for 10.2% of the total mobile gaming market. These earnings were off the back of 632m downloads, translating to a $9.2 revenue per download and making the genre one of the most profitable in the industry.
While Last War and Whiteout Survival are the clear frontrunners in the genre this year, Appmagic says it’s a dynamic and competitive field overall that isn’t monopolised by a few titles. For the first three quarters of 2024, 58% of the genre’s total revenue came from games outside the top five earners.
September’s top grossing games in the US
According to Sensor Tower data shared by research firm Circana, the top 10 mobile games by US consumer spend in September (plus their rank change compared to August) were:
- Monopoly Go (-)
- Royal Match (+1)
- Roblox (-1)
- Candy Crush Saga (-)
- Last War: Survival (-)
- Whiteout Survival (-)
- Township (-)
- Brawl Stars (+4)
- Coin Master (-1)
- Pokémon Go (-1).
As we’ve reported before, Circana also highlighted a spike in Brawl Stars revenue driven by the launch of a SpongeBob SquarePants collab. It “led to record breaking US spend in a single day” for the game, according to Sensor Tower’s Samuel Aune.
“Another huge story was Last War: Survival’s downloads exploding 42% month over month, reaching an all-time daily high of 430,000 and a new daily velocity of downloads around triple what Last War: Survival was pulling before,” he added.
Spending on mobile during the first three quarters of 2024 was up $1.7 billion year-over-year, Circana said.
Stillfront announces share buyback as bookings fall
Stillfront’s board of directors has announced plans to acquire more of its own shares, after a buyback programme was granted at the Swedish roll-up firm’s AGM in May.
Stillfront currently holds 10,245,000 of its own shares, which were recently acquired for SEK 80 million (~$7.5m), and amount to nearly 2% of the company’s total shares.
The Swedish games firm also posted bookings of SEK 1.59bn (~$149m) for the third quarter of its financial year, which was down 4.3% year-over-year. The company brought in revenue of SEK 1.6bn (~$150.1m) for the period, which was down 4.5%. Meanwhile EBITDA fell 8.7% to SEK 517m (~$48.5m).
The company, which plans to split itself into three business areas next year in a cost-saving exercise, is on the hunt for a new CEO following this month’s ousting of Jörgen Larsson, who has been replaced by interim CEO Alexis Bonte.
MAG’s full-year revenue falls 22%
The QuizDuel and Wordzee maker posted revenue of SEK 283.4m (~$26.6m) in its year-end results for 2023-24, a decrease of 22% from the prior year’s record sales. EBITDA was up 45% on the previous year though at SEK 75.8m (~$7.1m). ARPDAU for 2023-24 was 6.5 US cents, down 12% on the prior year’s 7.4 US cents. DAU (1.1m) and MAU (2.9m) were down 11% and 16% respectively.
“We continue to be profitable both quarterly and annually,” said Daniel Hasselberg. “While revenues and DAU are declining due to lower UA volumes than desired, our efficient operations and cost control have maintained our profitability despite significant investments in our new platform and game development.”
Pesta Ludo, Fishing Game Zone top Southeast Asian ad charts
Marketing data firm SocialPeta has ranked the Southeast Asian games with the most ad creatives during the first eight months of 2024.
Cavaco Broka’s card-based memory game Pesta Ludo led the iOS chart, while arcade shooter Fishing Game Zone topped the Android rankings.
Draconia Saga, Legend of Mushroom: Rush, Ancient Seal: The Exorcist and Braindom made up the rest of the top five on both platforms, although they appeared in different orders on the two charts.
Playable ads account for 10% of all ad impressions in Germany
Appmagic data suggests there’s a stronger adoption and possibly greater effectiveness of interactive ads in the German market compared to the US.
It analysed impression data from 2,000 playable ads, half from games and half from non-gaming apps, over the course of a year to late September.
It found that playable ads accounted for 10% of total ad impressions in Germany, versus 5.6% in the US.
The report takes a deeper dive into the Germany market, where playable ads account for 18.3% of all game ad impressions. In comparison, playable ads make up just 1.2% of ad impressions in non-gaming apps.
Playable ads were categorised into two categories: pure interactive, and video with interactive end cards. Pure interactive ones accounted for 30.5% of playable ads in games, and for 17.1% of playable ads in non-gaming apps.
Candy Crush Saga, Pokémon Go and Solo Levelling: Arise were the top gaming apps using interactive ads.
