GameRefinery, a Liftoff company, mobile game market review: April 2024

GameRefinery, a Liftoff company, has unveiled its latest report analyzing the mobile games market in the US, China, and Japan over April 2024. In the report, GameRefinery's analysts highlight the most noteworthy updates from April’s data for each country, including notable new releases, performance-boosting live events, and other significant game updates.

Here’s what they found:

• A mobile spin-off of SEGA and Atlus’ critically acclaimed high-school JRPG series Persona launched exclusively in China last month. Persona 5: The Phantom X was developed by Perfect World and peaked at 18 and 13 in the top-grossing and download charts. Much like the console installments, The Phantom X is set in modern-day Tokyo and combines social simulation with dungeon crawling. It features new and original characters and is monetized through a gacha system.

• Two initiatives were launched in League of Legends: Wild Rift to promote a new skin collection, Calligraphia. This included the game’s first-ever Top Up event and a limited-time gacha. During the launch of these events on 28 April, the game saw a colossal spike in daily revenue in the US of more than 1800%, marking the biggest ever increase in its history. 

• Happy Fishing Master (欢乐钓鱼大师) has been at downloads 1 in China since its launch last month. Unlike the many “casino-fishing” titles that are popular in the region, Happy Fishing Master is a “real” fishing game that lets players visit many unique fishing spots around the world and catch over 200 types of aquatic creatures.

• A new HQ area was launched in Call of Duty: Mobile, which acts as a base for the current season. This has addressed an ongoing issue with Call of Duty Mobile’s previous seasons, which often felt disconnected as they were made up of several individual events. Meanwhile, Warzone Mobile ramped up its monetization by introducing gachas just two weeks after its launch, likely in direct response to its disappointing ongoing performance. 

• Seasonal Events remained a key part of LiveOps strategies, with two notable mobile titles celebrating Earth Day. Stumble Guys launched a limited-time gacha, the Earth Day Wheel, which players spun for a chance to win planet-themed skins. Meanwhile, Angry Birds 2 launched a new Earth Day hat collection and reskinned an existing event.

• Gossip Harbor is the latest casual game to introduce a collection event into its LiveOps framework, an event type first coined by Monopoly GO!. During the Springtime Keepsakes, players collected cards from the core merge game and concurrent events to complete nine unique card albums. The 4X strategy game State of Survival also launched a similar card collection event around the same time, a first for the midcore side of the mobile market. 

For a full breakdown of all the biggest updates to top-grossing mobile titles during April, head to the GameRefinery website via this link: https://www.gamerefinery.com/mobile-game-market-review-april-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
+44 (0) 020 3026 1996