Special Report

What is the world’s top mobile game franchise?

As the mobile game market soars past console in terms of revenue, which brand has had the greatest impact over the last decade?

What is the world’s top mobile game franchise?

This article is part of an ongoing series of data-driven articles from PocketGamer.biz and data.ai (formerly App Annie) highlighting trends in the global mobile games sector using data.ai’s Game IQ analytics.

Mobile has dominated the global games market over the last 10 years. Small-screen gaming now dominates the market, capturing 60 percent of all the total gaming spend. That’s triple the revenue of the console market - home of the hallowed triple-A franchises.

In such a dynamic and ever-growing sector which intellectual property (IP) is the leader? There are a huge range of candidates - from Angry Birds and Candy Crush, to PUBG and Genshin Impact - each with billions of downloads, dollars and player hours.

Guess who?

Drilling down into the data, however, it becomes clear very quickly that by most major key performance indicators (KPIs) Talking Tom by Outfit7 is the most consistently successful mobile games property in the world over the last ten years.

The download data from the Apple App Store and Google Play from the years 2013 - 2020 shows that Talking Tom titles have, across the board, hit the number one slot every year. Despite many of the other major franchises making multiple appearances, there is much greater variation in the numbers two to ten slots, leaving Talking Tom games out in front.

Over the same period (2013 - 2020) Talking Tom titles also take the top spots in terms of monthly average users (MAU)

With the exception of two years - 2013 and 2015 - Talking Tom games have been the top three games by MAU on a global basis. Even more striking is the fact that this usage is growing, with increasing numbers of players enjoying the games.

This puts Outfit7 at the top of the charts in terms of the number of games in the top 100, across the other leading mobile publishers.

The birth of a legend

In 2010, Outfit7 launched the franchise’s first game, Talking Tom Cat. The game followed the well-established virtual pet game template - however it had a compelling novelty feature: players could speak into their mobile device microphone and Tom would repeat the phrase back.

This was enough to make Talking Tom Cat a viral hit. Over the years, Outfit7 has strategically developed the franchise, adding new characters, new mechanics, and all-new gaming experiences. Today, there are more than 20 titles in the Talking Tom & Friends franchise.

The Talking Tom games have accumulated more than 10 billion mobile game downloads for Outfit7, making Talking Tom & Friends the most consistently successful mobile games IP of the last decade.

Download Now

This analysis and much more can be found in the data.ai interactive report, which goes beyond the worldwide metrics here and surfaces the most recession-resilient apps and categories for a selection of major markets. All of it combines to bring an increasingly fuzzy near-future view into better focus. Get your copy here.

Find Out More

If you’re enjoying the insights from data.ai, you can listen in to the company’s new Game Changers podcast, which takes a deep dive into different aspects of the global mobile games market.

PocketGamer.biz regularly posts content from a variety of guest writers across the games industry. These encompass a wide range of topics and people from different backgrounds and diversities, sharing their opinion on the hottest trending topics, undiscovered gems and what the future of the business holds.