There’s a deluge of new data and research to wade through every week.
So every Wednesday we’re here to break it all down into digestible chunks: data drop has just the numbers you need to know about, minus the fluff.
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Five Nights at Freddy’s is back on top
Halloween and the release of the Five Nights at Freddy’s film has boosted this viral horror franchise up to the top of the paid charts once more. At the time of writing, it is dominating Sensor Tower’s iOS and Android paid charts.
On iOS, FNAF 1 & 2 are in the top two spots, FNAF 4 is in fourth and FNAF 3 is at number eight. ‘Sister Location’ is in 11th, and FNAF 6 is at 15th.
On Android, FNAF is top, FNAF 2 is in fourth, FNAF 4 is fifth, FNAF 3 and Sister Location are eighth and ninth respectively and FNAF 6 is in 16th.
Scopely mega-hit Monopoly Go continues to do the numbers, and Lexi Sydow of Data.ai has some great tidbits in a LinkedIn post. According to the firm’s numbers, Monopoly Go has been the number one US iOS game by downloads for 183 of the 204 days since launch – that’s 13m iOS downloads in the first 29 weeks.
Scopely also apparently has over 100 ad creatives running in the US, 7x more than it had at launch (Monopoly Go is second only to Royal Match’s 219 ad creatives).
A snippet on demographics, too: 17% of total audience are in the 18-24 year-old bracket, so it indexes younger than one might expect.
Rovio down across the board as Sega seals deal
Angry Birds maker Rovio reported in its Q3 financials that new owner Sega had now gained control of 97.7% of Rovio’s issued and outstanding shares.
Unfortunately Sega’s new buy reported year-on-year decline across the board. Q3 revenue is down 5.6% to €73.1m (~$77m), EBITDA is down 17.9% to €10m (~$10.5m) and operating profit dropped 22% to €6.7m (~$7.1m). Rovio said Angry Birds 2 and Angry Birds Journey were to blame for the decline, though Dream Blast was said to be growing.
Kolibri games boost Ubisoft financials
Assassin’s Creed maker Ubisoft announced its first half 2023-24 results last week, and while it did not break out mobile performance, it did namecheck Kolibri’s Idle Bank Tycoon and Idle Miner Tycoon games, stating that “overall engagement” was “up significantly year on year, reaching near record levels”.
It also confirmed that Hungry Shark studio Ubisoft London, formerly known as Future Games of London, would be closing and that Ubisoft Barcelona would pick up work on the franchise. Rainbow Six Mobile and The Division Resurgence will also “launch later this fiscal year”, it said.
Mistplay survey reveals retention and big spender trends
Some nice nuggets of info in loyalty platform Mistplay’s ‘mobile gaming loyalty report’, which surveyed 3,000 mobile gamers about how they interact with the games they play.
Nearly half said they discover new games through ads, with app store discovery second (39%) and word of mouth third (35%). 24% of those surveyed said social media is where they find new games, which feels surprisingly low.
Further in, there’s interesting stuff around why players churn out. The feeling that the game was becoming ‘pay-to-win’ was top, with bugs, lack of progress and too many ads also the top reasons given.
There are also several valuable insights on how high spending players behave scattered through the report. The below are all traits shared by players that spend over $100 on mobile games:
- 27% have at least eight games in their weekly rotation, 28% higher than the average player
- 22% are likely to spend money to keep pace with other players, 55% higher than average
- 74% prefer bundles of in-game content when buying IAP, 17.2% higher than average
- 77% say they’ll stop playing if they feel the game is too ‘pay-to-win’
$3m raise for industry veterans at Harmony Games
Griffin Gaming Partners plus angels Kristian Segerstrale and Akin Babayigit have backed Tiles Delight studio Harmony Games to the tune of $3m.
The studio bills itself as an AI-first outfit, and is led by former Machine Zone, Gree and Super Evil Megacorp exec Volkan Ediz, ex-Kabam, MZ and Wildlife marketer James Koh and engineer Joseph Kubiak.
Silent Hill Ascension hits 1m preorders
Released yesterday for halloween, Genvid’s interactive narrative Silent Hill Ascension gathered up 1m preorders just before launch, according to a LinkedIn post. At the time of writing it’s also number seven in the US iOS game chart.
Voodoo offers $2m for new puzzle game ideas
Yesterday French publisher Voodoo announced a $2m prize for developers submitting their games through a puzzle game competition set to take place on LinkedIn.
There are three prizes in total. The $2m first prize will go to “the first game that becomes a hit within one year of the end of the competition”, and there are $10k handouts to what Voodoo considers ‘best prototype’ and for ‘innovation and creativity’.
Goddess of Victory: Nikke at 1: $390m earned, 10.6m downloads
Tencent label Level Infinite has been promoting some first anniversary updates and live ops in its thirsty cover shooter Goddess of Victory: Nikke this past week.
Ahead of its first birthday on November 4, a quick peek at Appmagic tells us it has earned Tencent over $390m to date from 10.6m installs. That means it has a huge cumulative revenue per download (RPD) of $36.75.
Most of that spend is in Japan ($243m), with the US ($66.4m) and South Korea ($52m) a fairly distant second and third. Then there’s another huge drop to Canada ($4.4m) and the UK ($4.1m).
