On average, over 1.1 billion mobile game downloads took place every week in 2023 while more than $1.5 billion was spent each week by players, snowballing into $107 billion total revenue by the end of the year.
This comes as per data.ai’s latest report, State of Mobile 2024, which also explores which mobile genres and games dominated in downloads and consumer spending.
Plenty of players
Worldwide, the biggest genres of 2023 were hypercasual, simulation and action, with downloads of 16.4 billion, 10.5 billion and 5.5 billion respectively. Simulation was the only one of them to see a rise in downloads - up 0.7% while hypercasual downloads fell 7.5% and action by 12.1% - but hypercasual was the only genre among them to see an in-app spending rise.
In fact hypercasual spending rose by 52.9%, while simulation and action genres saw falls of 5.3% and 10.3%.
In the US, hypercasual, simulation also ranked first and second for downloads, but the puzzle genre pulled ahead of action to round out the top three. They saw 1.4 billion, 665 million and 352 million downloads respectively in 2023, with the same trio topping downloads in Canada, the UK, France and Germany too.
Countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and, importantly, China, helped bolster the action genre to third overall. And while China showed a penchant for simulation games too, it was RPGs that took the prize in one of the most crucial of gaming markets, with downloads up 8.6% and accounting for 21% of all Chinese mobile game installs last year.
Japan’s download numbers demonstrated a preference for RPGs too, up 23.8% in 2023 with almost 114 million installs. This was second only to hypercasual’s 143.7 million downloads.
Purchasing power
As for the highest-grossing genre worldwide last year, that honour also went to RPGs thanks in no small part to the likes of Genshin Impact and Pokémon Go. Via in-app spending, RPGs generated $24.5 billion in 2023, accounting for a huge 30% of revenues with only 3% of total downloads and showing the absolute success of the genre in monetising its players. An impressive $6.9 billion of that total came from Japan alone, almost double China’s $3.8 billion.
Strategy games ranked second for in-app purchase revenues worldwide at $10.7 billion, with match games close behind at $10.2 billion. And while simulation games were popular based on downloads, they only generated $7.7 billion in spending, behind casino’s $8.3 billion.
And looking at games individually, Candy Crush saw the highest levels of consumer spending of any mobile title last year, carried by the US and Canada. Honor of Kings came second through its popularity in China. Third came Roblox, fourth was Royal Match and fifth was Coin Master. Others among the top 10 worldwide included familiar names like Genshin Impact, Gardenscapes and Pokémon Go, while 2023 newcomer Monopoly Go landed in a respectable eighth overall, having generated over $1 billion in its first seven months.
data.ai's full report also reveals the top individual games by regional installs.
