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Tencent's megahit mobile MOBA Honor of Kings generated $1.9 billion in revenues in 2017

SuperData Research looks back on the year that was

Tencent's megahit mobile MOBA Honor of Kings generated $1.9 billion in revenues in 2017

The mobile games market generated $59.2 billion in revenues in 2017 with Tencent's enormously successful MOBA Honor of Kings (Arena of Valor) generating $1.9 billion alone, according to SuperData Research.

The market analytics firm has released its annual Year in Review report for 2017, which studied the previous year of revenues and growth in the global games market.

Honor of Kings was the highest-grossing mobile game of the year, with NetEase's Fantasy Westward Journey placing second and Mixi's Monster Strike landing third place. The latter two games generated $1.5 billion and $1.3 billion in revenues respectively.

Billionaires

Two other games cleared the billion-dollar threshold in 2017 – Clash Royale and Clash of Clans which both generated $1.2 billion. The only game on the list which launched worldwide in 2017 was Netmarble's Lineage 2 Revolution, which generated $980 million.

The top ten mobile games by revenue in 2017, according to SuperData

Overall, global mobile market revenues grew by $14 billion compared to 2016. The vast majority of this came from Asia, where revenues grew by $10 billion alone.

Looking ahead, SuperData estimates that Asia, North America, and Europe will generate a combined revenue of $55.5 billion in 2018 for the mobile games market. This is up $4.5 billion from an estimated $51 billion generated by the three regions in 2017.

Five of the top ten grossing games of 2017 are already featured on our list of games which have surpassed $1 billion in revenues. Other titles, including previous big hitters Mobile Strike and Game of War, failed to make an appearance in this list.

Editor

Ric is the Editor of PocketGamer.biz, having started out as a Staff Writer on the site back in 2015. He received an honourable mention in both the MCV and Develop 30 Under 30 lists in 2016 and refuses to let anyone forget about it.