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The top earning mobile games in Japan, the US, and worldwide for 2017 revealed

Nirolak

Nirolak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,660
You can also get a sense of the difference in the markets this way. This is also from App Annie's annual retrospective.

mobilejapan2017j8kxl.png


mobileus20173jkjp.png


mobileworldwide2017rrk6x.png


Source: https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/market-data/app-annie-2017-retrospective/#unique-identifier
 
darkside

darkside

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,321
Still find it amazing how a random eroge VN from 2004 ends up being one of the hottest properties in the past couple years. Never would have imagined it watcing the first (awful) anime series more than a decade ago
 
ItWasMeantToBe19

ItWasMeantToBe19

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
20,440
Pokemon Go was a fad as the most popular thing that had ever happened, but is still impossibly successful somehow despite how shitty many of the moves (the game not functioning in its first two months, the raids being impossible to do almost) have been and how limited the moneytization is.
 
matimeo

matimeo

UI/UX Game Industry Veteran
Verified
Oct 26, 2017
979
Puzzles and Dragons still hanging in there in Japan.
I had to ween myself off that game. Only mobile game that got me to spend too much money.
 

Lucumo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
690
darkside said:
Still find it amazing how a random eroge VN from 2004 ends up being one of the hottest properties in the past couple years. Never would have imagined it watcing the first (awful) anime series more than a decade ago
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Wouldn't call it "random". Tsukihime paved the way and the Nasuverse is pretty amazing. Dislike how T-M has been going these past several years though.

No SEGA makes me sad.
 
NSESN

NSESN

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,333
Colopl is bigger than I thought, I wonder how Nintendo suing will affect them.
 
Bunkles

Bunkles

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,663
Blizzard needs to make a mobile WoW with the Lineage 2 R treatment (autoplay). They would make a goddamn killing.
 
ZhugeEX

ZhugeEX

Senior Analyst at Niko Partners
Verified
Oct 24, 2017
3,099
What's even more impressive is that Google Play is not available in China which is the largest market for Honour of Kings. So China revenue is iOS only. Yet it still beats every other game that has both iOS and Google Play revenue. Same for Fantasy Westward Journey.
 
cakely

cakely

Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,149
Chicago
Pokemon GO, July 2016:

Michael Pachter said:
The game requires couch potatoes to get off the couch, and the novelty will wear off when they get tired or when their phone batteries die.I give this four months at the top of the charts, then it will fade.
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OP
OP
Nirolak

Nirolak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,660
Lucumo said:
Wouldn't call it "random". Tsukihime paved the way and the Nasuverse is pretty amazing. Dislike how T-M has been going these past several years though.

No SEGA makes me sad.
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Sega was a strong early performer on mobile, but really fell off (from a ranking perspective, not income perspective) as stronger competitors came in. Mind, they still make quite a lot on mobile.

Özgür said:
do we have numbers for fate/grand order in terms of revenue etc.
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Some of the games below it are approximately billion dollar annual earners, if that helps.
 
darkside

darkside

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,321
Einbroch said:
Number 10 isn't the top of the charts.

Check and mate.
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And it's a steep decline a year later while some of the other charting games have been there forever. Decline would have more to do with it being a mediocre game (and pointless in a lot of suburban and rural areas) than folks being lazy
 
ApeEscaper

ApeEscaper

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,722
Bangladeshi
Only ones i play on that list is Fate GO and Granblue Fantasy

Both of these i had to do workarounds to get to play them in EU in the first place quite annoying
 
Cels

Cels

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,786
monster strike NA was fun while it lasted

still remember grouping up with folks on the old forum to kill izanami and being super excited after my first kill
 
Chromax

Chromax

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 29, 2017
255
This reminds me I need to log in to Honour of Kings to prepare for the new season.
 

Bundy

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
20,931
Fate/Grand Order and Monster Strike are monsters. Congratulations Sony and mixi.
 
PachaelD

PachaelD

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,507
808s & Villainy said:
TENCENT is KILLING it. What's even crazier is that they own the majority share of Supercell as well
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There was a thread last year on top developers and publishers. I'd put Tencent at #1, Nintendo at #2 for their Switch comeback, and Sony at #3 for continual PS4 and FGO success.


Putting it in context a bit, Tencent, who primarily make F2P PC and mobile games with shares of equity from its subsidaries like Riot and large shares in Supercell, Epic and ActiBlizz etc, have made according to gameindustry.biz $11.5B in three quarters in 2017.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-05-18-tencent-game-revenues-hit-USD3-9-billion-in-q1
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...nline-game-revenues-hit-usd3-56-billion-in-q2
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...s-usd4-billion-in-latest-quarterly-financials

In the Media Create and NPD threads, I read that the US retail video game revenues are $13.8B for the whole of 2017.

fiendcode said:
US was $13.8B in 2017 for comparison.

source
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I know I'm comparing apples to oranges here (Tencent online gaming including its equity shares in other companies versus US retail gaming which for me is an estimate of a market) but by the time Tencent produces its full year results they'd have made $16B in 2017 which is seriously impressive.

And that's in comparison to the Japanese market, where mobile is just north of $12B whilst everything else is $3.5B. If we add those up it'd be just above $15.5B.

Nirolak said:
For comparison, Japanese console/handheld revenue was $1.69 billion for software and $1.81 billion for hardware, for a $3.5 billion combined result:

mobilerevenue2017knqie.png


https://www.appannie.com/en/insights/market-data/app-annie-2017-retrospective/#unique-identifier
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Also, I didn't find the Famitsu app report released back in October but even then FGO was tracking towards $1b revenue in Japan alone, which should have piqued a lot of folks' attention, but these days it feels that large numbers get lost in the discussion since we're talking billions of dollars.

https://www.famitsu.com/news/201712/08147606.html
In three quarters FGO made 89.6 billion yen in revenue according to Famitsu, which is USD810m.

Nirolak/ZhugeEX one of you please tell me that my analysis isn't right since we're talking about big numbers and billions of dollars in Japan/US versus just what Tencent makes.
 
OP
OP
Nirolak

Nirolak

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,660
hwarang said:
Candy Crush is still up there. Wow.
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AlmostHuman said:
There is still people that play candy crush?
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It's actually growing quite a bit recently. There's been a notable uptick in women spending on mobile in the US lately, which is why things like Game of War fell off the chart in the past six months in favor of Gardenscapes. It's just that Game of War was making so much in the first half that it's still at #3.
 
Ghostsonplanets

Ghostsonplanets

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,499
It's incredible how Clash Royale growed and stayed at the top since the release. Yet, no competitors from huge companies appeared( i know Squenix has one to be fair). The formula of gameplay is pretty good and addicted. I wonder why Nintendo doesn't do a Nintendo All Star with this style of gameplay and monetization.
 
Phendrift

Phendrift

Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,326
Yeah, overall really disappointing from Nintendo.

They can do better. Their IPs make it easy to dominate this stuff.
 
Cloud-Hidden

Cloud-Hidden

Member
Oct 30, 2017
4,990
ZhugeEX said:
What's even more impressive is that Google Play is not available in China which is the largest market for Honour of Kings. So China revenue is iOS only. Yet it still beats every other game that has both iOS and Google Play revenue. Same for Fantasy Westward Journey.
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Absolute beast, and Arena of Valor deserves as much success. Fantastic game that I hope more people in the US will pick up and start playing. We HAVE to get the f#*k over Candy Crush.
 
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