Despite the headwinds and challenges the mobile games industry faced in 2022, gaming apps continued making billions of dollars in revenue from their massive user base. However, the eight-month figures show that people are spending much less on their favorite titles than last year.
According to data presented by CasinosEnligne.com, the world’s five top-grossing mobile games, Honor of Kings, PUBG Mobile, Candy Crush Saga, Genshin Impact, and Roblox, raked in $3.1bn year-to-date, down from $7.4bn reported in 2022.
Genshin Impact, Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile Grossed Only One-Third of Last Year`s Revenue in Eight Months
Although the mobile games industry recovered from the challenging 2022, the world’s top-grossing gaming apps are seeing their players spending much less on in-app purchases this year. All of them grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in eight months, but the Statista and AppMagic data show it will be hard to reach 2022 figures in the remaining part of the year.
Tencent’s megahits, Honor of Kings, and PUBG Mobile, continue dominating the mobile games market with way higher revenues than any other title. Still, their revenues are far from the figures seen last year.
As the world’s top-grossing mobile game, Honor of Kings made nearly $865 million between January and August, compared to over $2.2bn reported last year. PUBG Mobile player spending also significantly dropped. Last year, the title grossed more than $1.7bn worldwide. The eight-month figures in 2023 show a significant drop in player spending to roughly $636 million.
Genshin Impact saw an even bigger drop. Last year, Genshin Impact players spent $1.56bn on the game, or 23% more than a year before that. But it will be challenging, if not even impossible, to reach this figure in 2023. Over the past eight months, MiHoYo’s action role-playing title made only $572 million, or just one-third of the revenue seen last year.
Candy Crush Saga and Roblox Fighting the Negative Trend
The Statista and AppMagic data show Candy Crush Saga and Roblox are the only two titles on the top five list fighting the negative trend this year.
In 2022, Candy Crush Saga players spent $1.03bn on an in-app purchase, up from $884 million a year before. Statistics show the title raked in another $592 million in eight months of 2023, or 60% of last year’s revenue.
After suffering a downturn and seeing player spending drop by roughly $100 million in 2022, Roblox is also on its way to reaching last year’s figures. Statistics show the title’s eight-month player spending hit $498 million, compared to $862 million reported in 2022
