Recent reports on the mobile gaming industry showed that core games generated the most revenue compared to other genres. Although core games are ahead in terms of revenue, most of the downloads are still provided by casual games.
Most of the spending on Android is for core games
App Annie‘s up-to-date mobile report published to be a guide at the beginning of 2021 showed that core games were the most revenue generating genre in the game category. According to the report, games accounted for a fifth of all mobile app downloads in 2020. 66% of mobile game spending on iOs and Android was for core games such as PUBG Mobile and Honor of King. By comparison, the revenue generated by casual games like Roblox or My Talking Tom Friends only gets 23% of the pie. Casino games lag behind with 11%.
In fact, these numbers should not be too surprising. As a matter of fact, seasonal events within core genre encourage players to spend money. Based on this, mobile gaming on track to surpass $120 billion in consumer spend in 2021 — capturing 1.5x of the market compared to all other gaming platforms combined.
In consumer spending specific to games, the top five are Honor of Kings, Pokémon Go, Roblox, Monster Strike and Coin Master.
See below the top earning games in the EMEA region including Turkey:
How much time did players spend in mobile games?
The average time spent per day on phones — Android-only — was also up 20% to 4.2 hours. On the Andriod platform, when it comes to the time spent on mobile games, core games took the first place again. While 55% of the time spent on core games; we see that the remaining 43% go to casual games and 2% to casino games.
Below is a list of mobile games that players spend the most time in EMEA region:
Which genres have been downloaded the most?
Casual games are still at the top when it comes to downloads. Casual games, which made up 78% of all downloads on iOS and Android last year, do not seem to leave this place to other genres easily. The download rates of core games are shown in the report as 20%.
Garena Free Fire was the most downloaded game worldwide. It was followed by Among Us, Subway Surfers, PUBG Mobile and Gardenscapes in the top five. In Turkey, the most downloaded game is Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles. You can find the following list of the most downloaded games in Turkey and rest of the EMEA.
The numbers will continue to increase
These increases, which we have seen last year, are partly due to the fact that more people spend time at home due to the pandemic. Although the idea of a retreat in numbers after the pandemic may wake up, this will not be the case. More and more people have made games – especially mobile games – a part of their daily life. Although the increase may slow down in the future, more users will continue to turn to mobile games every year.
