Top Grossing Games Key Statistics
Top Grossing Games by Country
Top Grossing Games by Platform
Top Grossing Games by Category
Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store host almost one million games collectively on their stores, spanning all genres from the classic puzzle, role-playing and action to the newly formed hypercasual, merge, and simulator, which have developed for mobile.
At launch, both of these stores prioritized paid-for games, with some of the pioneers on the platform being Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, and Tap Tap Revenge. All three of these popular titles recognized the value of the touchscreen, accelerometer, and other sensors to provide users with new experiences.
After a few years, paid-for games were overlapped by titles that offer in-app purchases to skip or make levels easier and purchase new items from cosmetics to more content. Most free-to-play games also rely on advertising to cover the initial development and future maintenance of a game.
Candy Crush Saga, Cut the Rope, and FarmVille were all part of this new wave of freemium games, which in some way push the user towards in-app purchases. For Candy Crush Saga and Cut the Rope, players can pay to skip levels or purchase more levels, while FarmVille has a time-lapse mechanic which meant users have to wait hours for an item to be ready or pay for instant access.
With revenues increasing year-on-year, video game publishers such as Electronic Arts, Tencent, and Ubisoft started to invest heavily in the space. It is common for publishers to now have divisions solely responsible for mobile games, which also work on mobile porting for popular PC and console releases.
Improvements to iPhone and Android phones hardware, from high-definition screens to faster processors and more RAM led to online experiences being possible on mobile, such as Clash of Clans and Honor of Kings in China, which borrows heavily from Riot Games' League of Legends.
This would be stretched even further in the late 2010s with the launch of Fortnite and PUBG on mobile, which are "battle royale" games that have 100 players in one lobby. Another new venture was the launch of Pokemon Go, which established a new location-based gaming genre that includes Minecraft Earth and Harry Potter: Wizard's Unite.
In the past few years, both Apple and Google have launched subscription-based services that bundle hundreds of games for a monthly cost. Most of these games are highly-rated, paid-for experiences, with the list curated by Apple and Google monthly to give subscribers something new.
We have collected data and statistics on the top grossing games. Read on below to find out more.
Top Grossing Games Key Statistics
- Honor of Kings was the top grossing game worldwide generating $1.65 billion, with almost all of the revenue coming from China
- Candy Crush Saga was the top grossing game in the US, while Roblox held the number one spot for another year in the UK
- The vast majority of revenue came from China, with PUBG Mobile, Honor for Kings, and Genshin Impact all earning over 60% of their revenue from the country
