Two iOS games reportedly broke the $100 million mark in terms of their U.S. App Store revenue last year, with Clash Royale and Pokémon GO dominating when it came to raking in money.
Clash Royale, a real-time multiplayer game spinoff of Clash of Clans, earned $277.1 million from an estimated 19.1 million downloads. Augmented reality game Pokémon GO meanwhile pulled in $270.2 million from a whopping 42 million downloads.
Check out the rest of the top 10 list below.
Photo: Sega Networks and Sensor Tower
The most surprising thing about the list — which comes from the 2016 Mobile Gaming Trends Report, from Sega Networks and Sensor Tower — is that only these two games broke the nine-figure dollar mark.
As a glance down the list will tell you, nothing else even came close. Indeed, there’s a $252.1 million difference between Pokémon GO and the third placed entry, Lords Mobile, which “only” made $18.1 million off of 4.1 million downloads.
The eagerly-anticipated Super Mario Run came in fourth place, but arguably underperformed with 16.6 million downloads leading to an estimated $16.4 million. As noted at the time, it seems that Nintendo had problems converting free downloads into people willing to splash out the ten bucks to download the whole game.
Of course, reports like this shouldn’t be taken as gospel. The figures are only estimates, and can vary according to who is providing the data. It’s also worth noting that this is U.S. downloads only, and 2016 marked the first year in which Apple earned more from app downloads in China than it did from the United States.
You can read the rest of the 2016 Mobile Gaming Trends Report here.
Via: Touch Arcade
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
One response to “Just two games dominated the App Store last year”
I’m an avid Pokemon Go player and I haven’t spent one real dollar on the game. I don’t live in a city and I still get everything I need from stops and defending a few gyms…
What the hell are people buying, let alone $270M worth of it???