Mobile Game Market Review 2024: Dungeon Fighter Mobile dominates download ranks, Last War: Survival sees 400%+ increase in downloads

GameRefinery, a Liftoff company, has released its latest report analyzing the mobile games market in the US, China, and Japan over May 2024. The report features insights from GameRefinery’s analysts based on May’s data for each country, including major new releases, performance-enhancing live events, and other notable game updates.

Here’s what GameRefinery found:

• A mobile version of Dungeon Fighter Online, an immensely popular action RPG that has generated more than 22 billion in revenue, launched in China on 21 May. Since then, it has climbed to the top of the grossing and downloads charts. The game plays just like its PC counterpart, featuring 2D side-scrolling combat and role-playing elements.

• The 4X strategy game Last War: Survival launched its first-ever in-game season, The Crimson Plague. This update, largely considered the biggest in the game’s history, caused a notable uptick in performance. Most notably, daily downloads began to spike on 23 May, peaking at a 400+% increase on 27 May. 

• With the Euros on the horizon, Clash of Clans aimed to capitalize on the football fever by launching a collaboration with renowned footballer Eerling Haaland. The event revolved around collecting Footballs through sport-themed challenges to unlock rewards. Despite Haaland’s presence, the collaboration event didn’t appear to drive anymore revenue or downloads than past seasonal updates.

• Genshin Impact-like Wuthering Waves sent ripples throughout the market when it finally launched last month, rising to the top 10 download ranks in the US and Japan. While the game shares several similarities with MiHoYo’s open-world monolith, it also has some unique mechanics that set it apart, such as a Pokémon-style monster-collecting feature.

• A new mobile game based on the anime and rhythm game franchise Idolmaster launched into the top ten-grossing ranks in Japan. It sees players building personal connections with their “idols” through a story-driven experience built around cinematic concerts and shares many similarities with one of Japan’s biggest mobile games, Uma Musume: Pretty Derby. 

• Battle Royale Free Fire launched a limited-time PvP experience, Outlaw, where players take up arms as either a dastardly gangster or heroic agent. Unlike most battle royale game modes, Outlaw has no time limits, meaning players can drop in and out whenever they like. Mechanically, it plays similarly to a game from Roblox, Jailbreak. 

• Supercell's Squad Busters finished its soft-launch period and entered the global market at the end of May. It has performed well so far, spending its first week in the top-grossing 10 and claiming the top spot for downloads, although it remains to be seen how it will perform long-term. It brings together characters from across all of Supercell’s other titles into a squad-based battle arena.

For a full breakdown of all the biggest updates to top-grossing mobile titles during May, head to the GameRefinery website via this link: https://www.gamerefinery.com/mobile-game-market-review-may-2024/ 

About GameRefinery, a Liftoff Company 

GameRefinery, a Liftoff Company, is the leading provider of feature-level data in the mobile games market, with an ever-growing database covering hundreds of thousands of games. GameRefinery's customers include leading mobile games companies such as Zynga, Wargaming, King, and FunPlus. The GameRefinery platform uses unique algorithms and a team of expert analysts to help developers, investors, and publishers delve into the very building blocks of mobile games to uncover the drivers behind success, understand why games are successful, and how to achieve success from pre-production to LiveOps.

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Media Contact:
Mike Durham
Big Games Machine
Mike@biggamesmachine.com
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