This Week in Apps - Summer Games

This Week in Apps is a short, no-fluff, round-up of interesting things that happened in the mobile industry. Here are our top highlights.

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U.S. Revenue Index (vs. 30 day ago)

Insights

1. Daily Consumer Spending in Top 3 Short Drama Streaming Apps Crosses $3M!

DramaBox, the highest-earning short drama streaming app, has seen revenue grow so much this year it's now close to earning $1,000,000 every day from the App Store and Google Play.

Since the beginning of the year, revenue has grown 962%!

And while it's the biggest, it's not the only one crushing it right now.

Short drama apps are a fairly recent trend that started in late 2023 and has been growing fairly consistently since. We covered short dramas in April in case you want more details, but the essence then and now is that people are spending a lot on streaming short dramas.

How much is a lot, well... Our App Intelligence shows that last Wednesday, the top three streamers which include DramaBox, ShortMax, and ReelShort, grossed a little over $3M. That's all in just a single day.

Of that $3M gross, DramaBox got to keep $913K, ShortMax $640K, and ReelShort $581K with Apple and Google taking the rest in fees. Also interesting is that while most of the revenue is coming from the App Store, as to be expected, there's still a significant chunk of revenue that's coming from Google Play. Nearly half for ShortMax. That's surprising.

Things get even more interesting when we look at growth. I compared the best day of revenue in January to the best day in July and these growth rates are astonishing.

ReelShort, which was the first to break records earlier this year, has seen revenue grow 34%. Normally I'd say this is great for the scale and the speed, but DramaBox beat it with 235%, and before you get too excited, ShortMax's revenue grew a whopping 642% this year.

I still don't understand the allure of these apps and their content, but I'm definitely not the target audience. What I do understand is the cleverness behind their monetization, which unlike traditional streamers who charge a subscription, relies on paying per episode but with in-app currency - something we see being very successful in games.

2. Chick-fil-A Gets Into Gaming and Sees Most Daily Downloads Ever

Food for downloads isn't a new trend, so when I saw Chi-fil-A's app at the top of the charts earlier this week I wasn't that surprised even though I didn't know what they're giving away for free.

7-Eleven did the same thing the week before and saw its downloads rise 12x.

But when I looked I saw that Chick-fil-A did something a a little different - they released a game. That's new.

On Monday, Chick-fil-A released Code Moo, a very casual game in Chick-fil-A's app that wins prizes every week for the next month. So, it is free food for downloading the app, but with a twist.

It's hard to tell if people cam for the potential for free food or for the game, but this campaign has driven the most downloads in a single day for the app. Ever!

Downloads rose throughout the day on Monday, pushing the app into the #1 spot in the US App Store, where it stayed overnight for a few hours on Tuesday. According to our App Intelligence, the app saw 173K downloads on Monday and 79K downloads on Tuesday.

That's significantly higher than its daily average of just 22K downloads, according to our estimates. And looking back all the way to 2017, there has not been a single better day for Chick-fil-A's downloads. The closest was 155K downloads in early January of 2020 which was a result of Chick-fil-A giving free nuggest to anyone downloading the app.

Neddless to say, this new campaign is both more successful and likely cheaper for the chain because most players won't get free food. I can already see other food chains duplicating the campaign. What a time to be in branded game development!

3. Zenless Zone Zero Got Off to a Slow Start, But Here’s Why That Might Be About to Change

Ever since Genshin Impact made such a massive impact on the gaming world (and not just on mobile) in the fall of 2020, each new release from developer miHoYo has been eagerly anticipated.

MiHoYo's latest release, Zenless Zone Zero (henceforth ZZZ), has been out for a few weeks now, and it's not doing as well as expected...

Touching down at the start of July, the highly stylized role-playing game spent its first couple of days of availability at or near the top of the global download rankings. Our data shows similar performance to the preceding HoYoverse title, Honkai: Star Rail (HSR), before ZZZ began to underperform compared to both it and Genshin Impact (GI).

It just isn't getting traction. The total downloads for the three games 20 days into their releases underscore the situation.

ZZZ's total downloads worldwide sit at an estimated 5M — that's half of HSR's 10M in the same amount of time and even less than GI's 12M. While day one downloads exceeded 850K, they’re now around 70K per day, less than a tenth.

There are plenty of potential reasons for the lack of initial exuberance translating into sustained uptake of the game.

For one, reviews, both from app stores and top gaming publications, place ZZZ behind its predecessors in terms of overall fun. The overriding criticism from gamers and professional reviewers alike centers on the lack of depth of gameplay versus the number of story sequences, minigames, and other content.

It's also possible, as we'll see when we talk about revenue, that the game appeals less to the mainstream contingent of gamers — something GI was great at early on — and more to a core gamer audience.

The great news for miHoYo is that, as a live service game, adjustments are possible — there's no doubt every bit of player feedback is being weighed and considered as ZZZ's long-term roadmap comes together.

Our App Intelligence shows the first inklings of what to expect as a handful of new in-game events kicked off on July 24. While ZZZ brought in more consumer spending on day one than its two precursors at $6.4M, nearly 6X the $1.1M grossed by GI on its first day (HSR was closer at $4.9M), the amount spent by players declined approximately 78% by day 19 of release to an estimated $1.4M.

Then the events kicked off, and revenue soared!

Our estimates reveal that spending skyrocketed by about 4x, reaching $5.7M on day 20 — and rank data shows it remaining elevated. The game's core players who've stuck with it, unlike the mainstream crowd that also showed up at launch, are clearly hungry for more content and ways to enjoy the game.

While refining the core gameplay of ZZZ will take time, it's clear that the live content miHoYo has planned is striking a positive chord. Hopefully, it continues to be music to players' ears.

4. China's Dominance Shatters in June - The Most Downloaded Games in the World

I crunched the numbers and ranked all mobile games by their downloads and unlike previous months, June was full of movements across all three charts.

Subway Surfers was, again, the most downloaded game in the world (and maybe the universe, but we don't have a model for that yet) in June. We estimate it saw 22M new downloads from the App Store and Google Play - mostly from Google Play - to cement its spot as the king of mobile games.

Subway Surfers' amazing stickiness is likely why there are more than 160 games with "surfers" in their name (according to data from Explorer).

Pizza Ready, a hyper casual title that rose to the top of our charts in May ended June in second place with 19M downloads, according to our estimates. A touch lower than May, but considering its an unknown name that just sprouted to the top, this is expected. Not many new hyper casuals stuck around for more than a single month so let's see if the trend continues for Pizza Ready.

Manage Supermarket, a new hyper casual title, rose into the third place in June with 19M estimated downloads from Google Play (because it's not available on the App Store).

Roblox and Free Fire Max round out the top 5 most downloaded games in June. Both saw more downloads in June than they did in May.

Here's what you won't see in June's chart - China-only titles Happy Fishing and DNF Mobile, which ranked well in May (on the App Store) but are completely gone in June. No China-only title made it to the top 10 on the App Store in June, something we last saw back in March.

Our estimates show that downloads of the top 10 games rose 7% to 163M in June across the App Store and Google Play. Historically it's July and August that see more downloads for games in the summer. Let's see if that trend continues this year.

5. Top Games Revenue Rose 47% in the Last Year - The Highest Earning Games in the World

I crunched the numbers and ranked all mobile games by their net revenue - what the publishers get to keep after Apple and Google take their cut, and wow, was June a good month for games!

地下城与勇士 (DNF Mobile) was the highest-earning game in the world in June. Our estimates show it borught it $133M in net revenue and that's just from the App Store in China. The game was launched in May and has had great growth right out of the gate, though things are starting to slow down in July.

Monopoly Go! came in 2nd in June with an estimated $144M of net revenue, most of which from the App Store. June marked Monopoly Go's lowest month of revenue since February, which isn't a surprise considering how quickly it managed to grow and how long it sustained this growth for.

Maybe that's why Hasbro is turning it (back) into a physical board game?

王者荣耀 (King of Glory), Royal Match, and Roblox round out the top 5 highest-earning games in June - a combination of ups and downs, mostly downs, except for Roblox that gre its net revenue by more than $10M in June, according to our estimates.

According to our App Intelligence, the top 10 highest-earning games in June saw $830M in revenue, the most we've ever seen in the series, and a healthy 5% increase from May.

Game Revenue Rose 47% In Last 12 Months

You might be thinking 5% isn't a lot, but looking at May's numbers, that's an increase of $39M. I'll let you decide if that's a lot or not because I have a bigger numbers for you - 47%.

I went through our monthly numbers for the highest-earning games and charted the revenue trend:

According to our estimates, net revenue of the top 10 games grew 47% since July of 2023. In more absolute terms, net revenue rose from $563M in July of 2023 to $830M in June of 2024.

Looking at the highest-earning games in July of 2023, it was Monopoly Go that topped our chart with $84M. The same game ended June of 2024 in second place with $114M - 36% higher.

In fact, when comparing the two charts, we see that the entire range shift up, moving the lower end of the top 10 nearly 2x in just a year.

With no reason for things to slow down, now's the time for game developers to put more effort into getting their games discovered, which I suspect we'll see even more of in the coming months and leading to the end of the year rush for games.

App Intelligence for Everyone!

The insights in this report come right out of our App Intelligence platform, which offers access to download and revenue estimates, installed SDKs, and more! Learn more about the tools or schedule a demo with our team to get started.

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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.