The mobile apps and games market is becoming increasingly crowded, with both saturation and competition intensifying. In 2025, new releases grew by 25% YoY, yet only a small share gained meaningful user attention, highlighting a widening gap between the volume of launches and the market’s ability to absorb them and making discovery a growing challenge for developers.
Volume is no longer translating into revenue leadership. For the first time, non-gaming apps outperformed games in IAP revenue, driven by steady app growth across both mature and emerging markets. This points to a structural shift rather than a short-term fluctuation.
Key Facts:
- Market saturation is accelerating, making apps and games compete harder for users:
– Releases grew 25% YoY to over1.4M in 2025
– Only around 10% attract user attention
- Games are taking a larger share of new releases this year:
– Games’ share of total releases increased from 63% in 2024 to 72% in 2025.
- First time ever, apps overtook games in terms of IAP revenue:
– Apps surpassed games in September 2025, generating $4.8B versus $4.5B.
– The most significant contributors to absolute revenue growth among apps were: ChatGPT (+513% YoY), TikTok (+28%), YouTube (+36%), Tinder (+10%), and HBO Max (+17%).
Gaming Trends
Mobile gaming growth continued to lose momentum in 2025, signaling a market entering a more mature and competitive phase, with both revenue and downloads growth slowing down. This reflects rising saturation and the exhaustion of earlier growth drivers, particularly in regions that had fueled expansion in previous years.
Across the top 10 mobile gaming markets, growth is largely stagnating. Download volumes show little overall expansion and are increasingly being redistributed within the group, with declines in markets such as Brazil offset by gains in Indonesia, while the United States and India remain broadly stable.
Revenue trends mirror this pattern. Moderate growth in Western markets such as the UK, Germany, and France is offset by declines in key Asian monetization markets, including South Korea. Together, these trends point to a maturing gaming market where competition is intensifying around a relatively fixed base of users and spending, rather than broad-based market expansion.
Overall, data indicates a gaming market where growth is increasingly driven by execution, engagement depth, monetization, and LiveOps practices.
Key facts:
- Gaming growth is slowing down
– Mobile games revenue growth slowed to +0.2% YoY versus +3% last year
– Download growth also weakened to +4.6% YoY vs. +6.6% last year
- Strategy became the fastest-growing major niche:
– It happened in both revenue (+16%) and downloads (+15%)
– Meanwhile, Casino and RPG declined due to weaker downloads and reduced in-store monetization
– Casino revenue fell by 7.6% YoY, despite download growth of 15.8%, pointing to deteriorating monetization efficiency
– RPG experienced a sharper downturn, with revenue down 16.6% and downloads declining by 9.1%
- After strong download growth in previous years, LATAM is now facing market saturation:
– Downloads growth has largely stalled across most countries: Colombia (-10%), Ecuador (-9.8%), Peru (-8.9%), Argentina (-8.4%)
– While revenue is growing rapidly: Argentina (+33.2%), Colombia (+23.6%), etc.
- AI drives creative advertising:
– With 56% of top 100 grossing games using AI in ad creation in 2025, AI is now firmly mainstream in creative advertising
- D2C adoption grows gradually:
– D2C, or Direct-to-Consumer, is a model where developers interact directly with players, bypassing app stores and platforms
– D2C revenue continues to grow, driven mainly by top-grossing titles
– While still not universal, it signals a gradual shift toward alternative monetization channels
Trends in Casual Games
Casual games continue to expand their audience, with download growth accelerating YoY, but revenue growth has largely stalled, as the market is not monetizing newly acquired users fast enough.
While Puzzle remains the strongest and most resilient casual genre, its largest sub-niche, Match-3, has reached maturity, with revenues plateauing. Growth is shifting toward newer mechanics, particularly Merge, which shows the strongest growth, which is driving a growing share of puzzle revenue through deeper meta and LiveOps-driven monetization.
However, this growth is highly concentrated, with a small number of top titles capturing the majority of revenue, highlighting rising competition within the segment.
Key Facts:
- Casual niche audience is growing, but the revenue is stalling:
– Download growth accelerated from +6.4% (2024) to +8.0% (2025)
– IAP revenue plateaued at around $21B
- Match-3 is still a leading Casual genre, but is now a mature and saturated segment:
– Revenue is essentially flat at ~$4.8B (+0.1%)
– Growth is shifting to newer formats
- Merge is the key driver of puzzle growth:
– Merge is the strongest growth engine in Puzzle, lifting its revenue share from 14% (2024) to 20% (2025)
– Merge revenue is highly concentrated: ~80% comes from the top-10 titles
– Gossip Harbor alone generated $550M in 2025, or 33% of total niche revenue
Trends in Midcore Games
Midcore games show a similar pattern of stabilization. Downloads have recovered since the 2023 downturn, but revenue has plateaued at around $33–34B, signaling a transition from rebound to maturity.
In terms of sub-genres, Strategy remains the primary growth engine, especially 4X, while Shooter and Simulation have improved monetization performance. In contrast, RPG experienced the sharpest decline both in users and revenue, losing its audience and monetization momentum.
4X Strategy continues to strengthen its dominance and remains the primary growth engine within Strategy, supported by deep meta and long LTV. Despite strong YoY revenue growth, most of the gains in 4X Strategy are concentrated in the top-10 titles, and concentration is rising.
Key facts:
- Shooter and Simulation are improving:
– Both genres delivered solid gains in downloads (+10% and +8%) and revenue (~+14% and +15%)
- Strategy drives Midcore growth
– In 2025, Strategy grew strongly in both downloads (+18.2%) and revenue (+15.9%), reinforcing its leadership
- 4X fuels Strategy expansion:
– 4X is the primary growth engine within Strategy, supported by deep meta and long LTV
– In 2025, it grew +31% in downloads and +21% in revenue YoY.
- 4X monetization is high-ticket:
– In top 4X titles, $99 offers contribute around 30% of total revenue, typically via currency bundles or core packs
– The next strongest tier is $44–49, reinforcing a premium-heavy offer mix
Trends in Hypercasual Games
Hypercasual games stand out as a structural exception. While downloads have stabilized and even declined slightly, revenue surged again in 2025, growing around 80% YoY.
This situation reflects rapid hybridization: sub-genres such as Block Puzzle, Sort Puzzle, and Physics Puzzle are monetizing far more effectively than classic hypercasual through deeper mechanics, improved mid- and long-term retention, and stronger IAP monetization.
Retention is rising significantly across the entire lifecycle, but it’s especially strong in mid- and long-term periods, making the niche more resilient in terms of LTV and explaining the sharp revenue growth.
Key Facts:
- 2025 is Hypercasual’s turning point:
– Hypercasual IAP revenue grew ~80% in 2025 and has increased 4–5x over three years
– Downloads remain very high at 1.1–1.3B per month but are no longer expanding
- Downloads remain very high at 1.1–1.3B per month but are no longer expanding
– Puzzle, Arcade, and Simulation now capture a growing share of hypercasual revenue
- Top offers drive most monetization
– In top hypercasual puzzle games, the top-3 offers generate ~40% of revenue
– In top hypercasual puzzle games, the top-3 offers generate ~40% of revenue
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