Investors and game companies alike regularly question whether the mobile games space is dominated by one hit wonders. SuperCell, King and Kabam are proving this is certainly not the case. With a series of new games launched by these games-as-a-service specialists, the top 10 grossing games ranking in most countries is increasingly dominated by the big three.

Candy Crush Saga seems not to be cannibalized by King’s other titles as its revenues continue to rise while their latest games added tens of millions of dollars last March alone. This is quite surprising, considering the fact that 48 percent of mobile Candy Crush Saga players has also played at least one of Kings’ other mobile titles in the past few months. King’s strategy has always been to perfect their titles and gather huge communities on social and casual platforms before releasing to mobile. Using our latest franchise product, we can see that the PC remains the most popular platform on which the majority of King’s title are played, with only Candy Crush Saga being played more on the smartphone. This is likely because Candy Crush Saga has been available on mobile for a longer period of time, and we expect the other titles to follow the same trend in the coming months.

Farm Heroes Saga is King’s second best performing game, taking 6th and 7th place in the global grossing iOS and GooglePlay charts respectively. If this game continues to perform well it could add another $250 million to King’s revenues this year. Slightly more than half of mobile Farm Heroes Saga players, 53 percent, also play Candy Crush Saga.

SuperCell’s Boom Beach, launched globally mid-March, is expected to join Clash of Clans and Hay Day in the top 10 grossing list of many countries in our next monthly report. Its revenues are currently ramping up to more than half a million dollars a day.

Mobile gaming has the longest tail of any game platform
Even with such dominant players, the long tail remains the most attractive of any platform for game developers. Based on revenues generated in US appstores alone, 247 different game publishers made more than $1,000,000 last year, after deduction of the appstore fee of 30 percent. Of course, it is fair to mention the fact that the total number of developers targeting smartphones and tablets is much larger than relatively closed platforms such as consoles.

In the US, the top 10 grossing games take 25 percent (iPhone) to 36 percent (iPad) of revenues grossed by the top 1,000 games. For GooglePlay this share is 27 percent. In general, the U.S. has a relatively long tail while on the high side are the iPhone in Spain (59 percent), Brazil (55 percent), China (54 percent) and Korea (54 percent).

Empire: Four Kingdoms conquers Europe, Bingo games take the U.S. by storm
One of the most notable newcomers in the games rankings is Empire: Four Kingdoms from German publisher GoodGames. Their latest title entered the top 10 in most European countries last month across the iOS and GooglePlay stores. Actually, the majority of its several million dollars generated in March were through GooglePlay. The launch of Empire: Four Kingdoms was supported by an impressive TV campaign in key European territories with March revenues placing the German publisher in the global top 20 grossing publishers. Empire: Four Kingdoms is another example of a “mid-core” game that monetizes very well.

At the same time, social casino games are performing better than ever, particularly on the iPad in the U.S. Four out of ten top grossing games are bingo and social casino games published by DoubleDown, BigFish, GSN and BitRhymes. This likely relates to the changing demographic profile of typical iOS versus GooglePlay players, as more and more Android devices are attracting early adopters with a younger demographic that is not drawn to social casino style games as much. 

Monthly Top 20 Mobile Games — iOS
The top 6 games remained unchanged this month with Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga and Hay Day still topping the charts. Both King.com, with three of their Saga tiles, and Supercell have three games in the top 20 grossing iOS games.

This month there are four new entries: Line: Go to Disney by Naver Japan at position number 10, Monster Strike by mixi, Inc at position number 12, Line Cookie Run by Naver Japan at position number 19 and Battle in Warring States by Sumzap Inc. at position number 20. Notably, Minecraft – Pocket Edition (Mojang ) and The Simpsons: Tapped Out (Electronic Arts) dropped out of the top 20.  

Monthly Top 20 Mobile Games — Playstore
The top 3 games remained unchanged this month with Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons holding onto the top spots. Both Hay Day and Black Cat & Witch Quiz jumped a spot in the ranking to numbers 4 and 5 respectively — at the expense of Line Pokopang which dropped from position number 4 to 6.

There are four new entries this month including Line: Go to Disney which debuted at number 10 and Monster Strike which debuted at position 12. The following games dropped out of the top 20: Dragon Quest Monsters Castle Clash and Professional Baseball Pride. 

Monthly Top 20 Mobile Publishers — iOS
The top 10 publishers hardly changed this month with the first 9 positions remaining the same. Colopl, Inc. climbed one place to number 10 pushing Gameloft down a spot. King.com is still topping the charts and Supercell is taking second place followed by EA. There are no new publishers entering the top 20 this month.

Namco Bandai Games Inc. made the biggest jump in the chart climbing 6 spots to number 12. Zynga climbed two spots and is now at number 17. Square Enix Inc. made the biggest drop in the chart, falling 8 places to number 20. Due to the continuing success of Game of War — Fire Age, Machine Zone, Inc kept the number 7 position despite having no other games in top 1,000 grossing games. 

Monthly Top 20 Mobile Publishers — Playstore
Compared to the iOS store a lot changed in the Playstore top 20 publishers this month — but King.com remain at number 1. Line Corporation and Supercell swapped positions with the latter now at number 3 in the charts.

CJ E&M corp. climbed two spots to number 4 while mixi, Inc climbed 5 spots to number 9. The success of mixi, Inc can largely be contributed to Monster Strike which entered the top 20 grossing Playstore games at position number 12.

There are two new entries this month, Goodgame studios at position 19 due to the success of their only game in the top 1,000 grossing games Empire: Four Kingdoms and Gamevil at number 20. Square Enix (14th last month) and Social Quantum (18th last month) dropped out of the top 20 publishers.