David 
19/05/2014Mobile games have been said to be one hit wonders which only last for a short period of time. But here are a few facts that will definitely rock your boat! The big three mobile game developing companies (King, SuperCell and Kabam) are almost always ranking in the Top 10 mobile games in almost every country. In this blog we will paraphrase the results from research firm Newzoo about the US mobile game market results of March 2014.
King, the king of games:
King is known from its most popular title: Candy Crush Saga. But this is not the only game that this company has successfully produced, as the figures show that their other titles such as Pet Rescue Saga, Farm Heroes and Papa Pear Saga are adding tens of millions of dollars to the company’s revenue each month. Their gaming communities easily jump between their titles as 48% of the Candy Crush players has also played at least one of King’s other mobile games in the last months. Farm Heroes, their second best title can add up to 250 million dollar to King’s revenue if the game continues to perform as well as it currently does.
The longest tail you will ever see:
Even with a market that is somewhat dominated by three big players, a lot of other companies understand the appeal of the long tail effect of mobile gaming. Based on the figures from the US app stores alone, there are 247 different publishers that made over 1 million dollar last year. That is a lot of money, especially when we tell you that these revenues are what’s left after deducting the app store fee of 30%.
So is it only US companies that can breach the 1,000,000 mark? The answer is plain and simple: no. German publisher Goodgame entered the top 10 mobile games in most European countries and generated several million dollar in March alone with their title Empire: Four Kingdoms. This placed Goodgame in the global top 20 grossing publishers.
Rankings, the things gamers love:
Newzoo also had a look at the monthly Top 20 ranks for both mobile games and mobile publishers. For the Top 20 games they had a look at iOS and the Playstore. The Top 6 games remained the same in iOS meaning that Clash of Clans, Candy Crush and Hay Day still rule the top of the charts. The most notable changes were the drop out of the Top 20 from Minecraft – Pocket Edition and The Simpsons: Tapped Out. At the Playstore there are four new entries this month. Which means there are quite some changes in these rankings.
When looking at the rankings for the Top 20 publishers not much has changed on iOS. The Top 9 did not even change at all. The others simply climbed and fell a few places, but there were no new publishers in the Top 20 this month. For Playstore King.com is still reigning supreme as the #1. In this chart there are two new entries being Goodgame studios and GAMEEVIL. These newcomers kicked out SQUARE ENIX and Social Quantum.
