Global Mobile Games in September｜ Genshin Impact makes a transition insanely

With the aid of the App Intelligence and other modules, we sorted out the top 20 global mobile games by revenue, download, and advertising in September 2022, hoping to be of assistance to more people in the mobile app industry who try to understand the changing trends of the global mobile market.

The overall performance of global mobile games in September:

• [Genshin Impact] had collaborations for transition and no significant revenue growth from its 2nd anniversary celebration;
• With funny pigeon + high-quality advertising, [Survivor.io] was among the top games by both download and revenue;
• Stickman creatives were popular, and [Stick Hero], a game newly released in August, received over 10 million downloads on Google Play;
• With as many as 4600 creatives released, spot-the-difference gameplay was a growing trend among casual games.

Top 20 by Revenue

First, let's look at the revenue of global mobile games:

The new popular game [Survivor.io] (Chinese version: 弹壳特攻队) continued gaining popularity to completely break the ice of weak in-app purchase of casual games, thanks to its casual + Roguelike gameplay and reasonably designed top-up system. According to the data of SocialPeta APP Intelligence, [Survivor.io] grossed over $30 million in revenue from the App Store and Google Play combined, with about 163 creatives released daily.

[Genshin Impact] started its insane marketing campaign in September, including its 2nd pre-anniversary celebration online and massive collaborations offline. With an extremely busy schedule, the game announced many offline collaborations with brands of perfume, food and drink, newspaper, and other products.

According to most anime-style gacha games, their revenue usually reaches the highest peak of the year during anniversary celebrations. But in September, [Genshin Impact] had revenue growth of over 20% MoM on the App Store and a revenue decline of nearly 17% MoM on Google Play. Obviously, the world-known IP [Genshin Impact] has started to focus less on increasing its sales and more on its brand building. With a wide range of collaborations and crossover events such as anime and manga adaptation, miHoYo made it to the annual list of "Top 10 Practice Cases of Digital Innovation in Culture and Tourism" announced by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China on the 8th October.

[RO仙境傳說：愛如初見], a spin-off game of the 20-year-old Ragnarok Online, was finally released online by Gravity Game Vision. [愛如初見] became a hit game immediately after its release, thanks to its classic MMO gameplay, full reproduction of the Rune-Midgarts customs and practices, and tributes to classics bringing out nostalgic feelings. The game generated a revenue of over $16 million in September on the App Store. [愛如初見] chose to have an endorsement deal with the famous singer Wayne Lim Jun Jie who sang a song for the game. It's a common advertising strategy in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan.

In September, many new games were ranked while old games topped the revenue chart of both the App Store and Google Play with a steady revenue. Korean MMO mobile games continued to stand out with their revenue on Google Play. The hit game [히트2] released on 22 August was the No.2 highest-grossing game on the App Store. [히트2] allows players to cross-play between 3 platforms and is a spin-off of Heroes of Incredible Tales (HIT), making it as popular as the previous hit game [ODIN: Valhalla Rising].

Top 20 by Download

Next, the downloads of global mobile games in September: dog head creatives help games top the chart of downloads; the stickman game is new on the top 10 Google Play chart.

[X-HERO], an American-style card game of Bingchuan Network, had the most head dog creatives. The game topped the American free game chart on the App Store within only 4 days. With its updates of MiniGame and innovative ad creatives, [X-HERO] recorded a 117.4% MoM growth of downloads from the App Store.

While Bingchuan Network's game was gaining popularity, the first dog head game [Save the Doge] experienced a decline in popularity. The game had over 10 million downloads on Google Play, down 12.4% MoM and plunging 5 spots to fall out of the Top 10 by download.

[Stick Hero], a stickman tower-defense mobile game, was officially launched globally on 25 August. The gameplay is mainly about comparing figures and climbing towers. The game was a successful case of making games from popular advertising creative patterns. The most outstanding part of the game is the perfect stick-made replicas of various IP characters, such as Poppy Playtime. The game received over 90,000 comments on Google Play in September, was rated 4.7 out of 5, and achieved a total of over 10 million downloads.

Top 20 by Advertising

Now, it's the advertising chart. Because many new games were released in the summer holiday, the updated operation strategies and advertising creatives caused an amazing change in advertising on both the App Store and Google Play. Two new games topped the charts of advertising.

The top 1 on iOS was the casual shooter game [1945- Airplane shooting games], with a total of 2500 deduplicated creatives in September. The top 1 on Android was Bingchuan Network's [英雄戰紀], with a total of 7400 deduplicated creatives in September. In addition to more creatives, [英雄戰紀] quickly changed its head dog icon into a "parking puzzle" icon and started to release "parking puzzle" ad creatives.

[一念逍遥]'s global version [Overmortal] was released on the App Store on 20 September and it started a massive media buying on both the App Store and Google Play in September. The game released over 7000 deduplicated creatives in the month to be among the top 10 games by advertising.

Spot-the-difference games were newly active in advertising. [Define - Find the Difference] on iOS started advertising in October 2021 and had about 1300 deduplicated creatives in September this year. [Find the Difference] on Android had released over 5600 deduplicated creatives for over 204 days and it had over 3300 deduplicated creatives in September.

Significantly, SLGs' advertising started to recover in September, with [Rise of Kingdoms], [Last Fortress], [Kingdom Guard] and other games back on the chart of advertising.

That's all for the revenue and downloads of global mobile games from the App Store and Google Play and the advertising insights into global mobile games in September 2022.