According to Appmagic, Tencent is of course the top grossing mobile game publisher of 2023, and is followed by NetEase and Playrix for the fourth year running.
Mihoyo and King remain in fourth and fifth, while Monopoly Go and Royal Match’s rampant success saw Scopely up 14 places to sixth and Dream Games up 22 spots to ninth.
Supercell saw one of the biggest year-on-year drops, falling from 7th place in 2022 to 11th last year.
Full analysis and commentary follows below of the top twenty and beyond. Remember: these figures are Appmagic estimates and do not include 30% platform fees.
Want more data and commentary? Elsewhere on the site you can find:
- The top grossing mobile games of 2023
- The top mobile game downloads of 2023
- The top mobile game publishers of 2023, by downloads
Tencent will hardly be disappointed with its incredible $4.8bn-ish earnings from mobile games in 2023, of course. But as an industry juggernaut it is broadly representative of the mobile business’ wider woes – this is its second year of IAP revenue decline after peaking in 2021 with ~$5.7bn in earnings. The chasing pack aren’t even close to that one-two punch of Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile, and the rest of the top five are in the same spots as the year prior.
NetEase, which has been comfortably second for years, declined year-on-year by a hefty ~$200m – and with Playrix revenues up by ~$180m, the Homescapes maker was very close to taking the number two spot in 2023.
Mihoyo was also up year-on-year, boosted by the monster launch of Honkai: Star Rail (though as we’ve noted previously, it ate into Genshin Impact’s earnings over the summer).
Microsoft’s new plaything King declined a little compared to last year, but stayed in fifth, and was still comfortably ahead of a surging Scopely in sixth spot. The US publisher, now owned by Savvy Games Group, shot up 14 places in the rankings off the back of Monopoly Go’s huge launch, which itself was the ninth biggest earner of 2023.
Bandai Namco revenue dropped a little year-on-year, but was still a decent amount ahead of Roblox, which was pretty flat – though that was good enough for the UGC platform to rise two places into eighth spot.
After Scopely, Dream Games was the other huge winner in 2023. Royal Match was already out globally in 2022 but hadn’t quite hit its stride, hence the Turkish firm’s 22 place leap into ninth spot.
That meant the upstart puzzle game-maker beat mobile stalwart Zynga, which saw its IAP revenue decline by ~$230m year-on-year, but only dropped two places – another sign of the market’s overall woes.
The top grossing mobile game publishers of 2023: 11-20 and beyond
11. Supercell (Finland): $762m
12. Moon Active (Israel): $755m
13. Konami (Japan): $736m
14. Niantic (USA): $672m
15. NCsoft (Korea): $642m
16. 37Games (China): $609m
17. Square Enix (Japan): $595m
18. LilithGames (Hong Kong): $594m
19. FunPlus (Switzerland): $546m
20. Xflag (Japan): $531m
Supercell dropped out of the top ten grossing publishers for the first time in 2023. It earned just over a cool $1bn in 2022, but 2023 saw a drop to around $762m – that’s over $200m in a year. Perhaps we’ll be seeing one on Squad Busters, mo.co or Clash Mini go global in 2024, then.
Moon Active declined only a little in 2023, dropping one spot in the rankings, while Konami saw revenue rise by around $30m thanks to eFootball, which is doing well – enough to boost it up three places. Niantic was up by around $10m year-on-year thanks to Monster Hunter Now, and climbed four spots as a result.
FunPlus has a tough year, though – it was down five places and down nearly $200m in annual IAP revenue.
Other notable publishers worth a mention outside the top 20: Century Games leapt up 36 spots to almost hit $500m in 2023 thanks to Whiteout Survival, a slight decline in revenue for Activision to ~$315m was enough to actually push it up a spot in the rankings to 39th, just ahead of Peak Games which saw year-on-year revenue drop from ~$367m to ~$294m.
