Street Fighter: Duel dominated the charts for downloads in the United Kingdom and the United States, but Tencent’s big new title Honor of Kings remained low in the charts in Brazil.
That's according to Data.ai's latest report on worldwide popularity charts by downloads, consumer spend and monthly active users. The worldwide popularity charts remained stable, with familiar entrants.
The top-five consisted of Subway Surfers, Free Fire, Candy Crush Saga, Roblox and Ludo King. Meanwhile in the United States a more interesting picture emerged, with the top two games by downloads being the recently released Street Fighter: Duel and Mighty Doom respectively, while in the United Kingdom Chess.com took up the second-place spot.
Roblox of course topped the charts for monthly active users worldwide, followed by Free Fire and Candy Crush saga rising to second and third place respectively. Subway Surfers slipped down to the #4 position, while Minecraft: Pocket Edition remained at #5. Roblox even dominated in a number of individual markets, such as France, Australia, the UK and the US - although some areas such as Japan had entirely different sets of popular titles in terms of active users not seen anywhere else.
Meanwhile in terms of consumer spend, Q1 2023’s big breakout was Gardenscapes - which was top of the charts for four markets out of ten (Australia, France, United Kingdom & United States) - and Royal Match. The latter moved up further into the top ten while Gardenscapes rocketed eight places into the #9 spot. Their success is attributed to a renewed UA strategy and paid ads, with Gardenscapes gaining an organic downloads boost, meanwhile Royal Match saw 40% of its iPhone purchases for the quarter being their $1.99 mini-coin package.
Uma Musume Pretty Derby, based on the anime series, shot up 16 spaces into the top-ten for worldwide consumer spend just behind Gardenscapes. While Uma Musume still holds the top spot for consumer spend in its home of Japan, another manga-inspired game, Blue Lock Project: World Champion saw a meteoric +321 spot rise four months since it’s debut to the #3 position for consumer spend and the #1 spot in terms of downloads.
Stability and street fights
Street Fighter: Duel reaching the top-spot is not unexpected given the pedigree of its title and the fact that it came out of the oven freshly baked. Mighty Doom is a more interesting entrant, given how it branches out from the FPS origins of Doom. While neither big new titles are groundbreaking, they’ll nevertheless be pleasing for their parent companies.
Interestingly, Tencent’s Honor of Kings did not break the top 10 for downloads or spend in Brazil, where the release had made a massive splash. It ranks at #37 in terms of downloads, slightly below Street Fighter: Duel in the same market at #35.
Don’t shed any tears for HoK yet, the title has only just been released in Brazil and a MOBA is a more specialised genre with a slightly narrower appeal. Plus, it clings to the #1 spot in the unmoving top-four games by consumer spend worldwide, alongside Candy Crush Saga, Genshin Impact and Roblox.
Either way it seems Tencent’s strategy of bringing two big Chinese hits to new markets has paid off. Whether Street Fighter: Duel will stay popular seems up for debate, but after 20m pre-registrations even before launch it’s possible Honor of Kings still has amazing growth potential.
