Game Revenue Growth Reversed in November - The Highest Earning Mobile Games in the World
I crunched the numbers and ranked the highest-earning mobile games in the world in November. I expected revenue to drop a bit as budgets shift to shopping but the number was much more than I expected.
Last War was the highest earning mobile game in the world in November, with $119M in after-fee revenue, according to our App Intelligence. The title isn't new to 1st place, but also not that familiar with it having only reached it twice this year.
It was also the most downloaded game in November, so something is definitely working for Last War's publisher Funfly. It's likely the heavy ad spend, which even includes targeted Apple Ads with 15 Custom Product Pages - demonstrating that even mid-size studios can compete at the top if they play the game right.
Whiteout Survival came in second with $115M in estimated after-fee revenue, a touch more than October. Whiteout Survival sat in 1st place for a bigger chunk of the year than Last War, but the gap is growing.
Royal Match, Monopoly Go, and China-only title Honor of Kings round out the top five.
Honor of Kings' revenue dropped substantially in November - from $110M to $83M, according to our estimates. The title's revenue has fluctuated a lot this year, from a high of $154M in May to nearly half in November. The overall trend has been declining though.
Together, Appfigures Intelligence shows the top 10 highest earning games brought in $897M in after-fee revenue in November, which is about $100M less than October. I zoomed out my analysis to compare all games and interestingly enough, while bigger apps took big hits the long tail actually saw revenue growth.
The entire category was down about $55M - meaning the long tail gained roughly $45M, which helped offset about half of what the big 10 lost.
It doesn't mean that there was less demand for games, which we saw with downloads growing, but they're not necessarily going to the incumbents. That's good news for game developers. With holiday budgets shifting back from shopping to entertainment in late December and January, we'll be watching to see if this revenue dip reverses and whether the long tail can maintain its momentum.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
