Games such as Pokemon GO, Honor of Kings and Candy Crush Saga helped propel mobile game revenue to $64.4 billion in 2019.
This information was revealed in SuperData's '2019 Year in Review', which confirmed that the digital games industry as a whole grew by three per cent to $120.1 billion, with mobile representing more than half of the overall total. PC accounted for $29.6 billion while console claimed $15.4 billion.
Epic Games' battle royale behemoth Fortnite became the highest-grossing digital game for the second year in a row, earning an estimated $1.8 billion. Fortnite's continued mainstream success has helped keep the title ahead of the competition, with its latest event crossing over with the Star War franchise.
Free-to-play rising
Free-to-play games revenue increased by six per cent to $87.1 billion in 2019, with mobile titles accounting for six of the top 10 games throughout the year. Furthermore, every four out of five dollars spent on digital games last year originated from the monetisation model.
The full top 10 list for the highest game revenue can be seen below:
- Fortnite (Epic Games) - $1.8 billion
- Dungeon Fighter Online (Nexon) - $1.6 billion
- Honor of Kings (Tencent) - $1.6 billion
- League of Legends (Riot Games) $1.5 billion
- Candy Crush Saga (King) - $1.5 billion
- Pokemon GO (Niantic) - $1.4 billion
- Crossfire (SmileGate) - $1.4 billion
- Fate/Grand Order (Aniplex) - $1.2 billion
- Game for Peace (Tencent) - $1.2 billion
- Last Shelter: Survival (Long Tech/im30.net) - $1.1 billion
Genre-wise, RPG titles topped the largest market share on mobile at 23 per cent, with puzzle games following in second at 15 per cent of all revenue.
A report published in November by SuperData found that 55 per cent of seven-to-nine year-olds prefer tablets before moving on to consoles when kids reach ages 10-to-12.
