Data & Research

Winners take more: The most successful mobile games are growing fastest

Insights from App Annie’s State of Mobile 2020 report

Winners take more: The most successful mobile games are growing fastest

Many headlines from App Annie’s State of Mobile report centred on the prediction that mobile gaming would surpass $100 billion in annual revenue during 2020.

What’s more significant, however, are the two very different ways in which the sector is developing.

This is best highlighted by the rise of hypercasual games on one hand and the rise of core games on the other.

Clearly, each genre has a very different impact and appeals to different demographics.

Hypercasual games have been responsible for a massive rise in downloads; casual games now account for 82 per cent of all mobile game downloads.

Conversely, the new generation of core shooter mobile games such as PUBG Mobile, Free Fire and Call of Duty: Mobile have captured the majority of engagement and monetisation.

Specifically such games account for 55 per cent of time spent playing mobile games and 76 per cent of spending.

This trend is combined with the ability of the most successful mobile games to capture an increasing share of the mobile game sector’s overall growth.

This can be seen when looking at the breakdown of mobile games generating more than $5 million annually.

During 2019, this elite group of games rose by 66 from 1055 to 1121, but the largest rise was among those mobile games generating more than $100 million of annual revenue, up 21 per cent to 140 titles.

You can download the App Annie State of Mobile 2020 report here

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.