2021, a record year for mobile video games

It is a booming market.

According to analytics firm SensorTower, video games on smartphones and tablets are expected to total $ 89.6 billion in revenue for 2021, up 12.6% in one year.

They will represent respectively 61% of the revenues of the Apple Store, or $ 52.3 billion, and 78% for the Google Play Store, with $ 37.3 billion.

This year, eight mobile video games have already surpassed the symbolic billion dollar revenue mark.

They were only five last year.

And as in 2020, two titles stand out from the crowd.

The first is

, titled

in China, which generated more than 2.8 billion in revenue in 2021. Its publisher Krafton now represents a capitalization of nearly 20 billion dollars, after a IPO on the South Korean stock exchange this summer.

Games with a variety of universes

PUBG Mobile

is a “

 ” game: around a hundred players compete in the same environment so that only one survivor remains at the end of the game.

Another famous game is based on this principle, Fortnite, with 10 million daily players.

The latter being banned in China, it has failed to exceed $ 1 billion in annual revenue.

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video game

Tied with

,

garnered the same amount of revenue in 2021. This battles game is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which also owns the WeChat messaging app.

Third on the podium is the action game

, launched in 2020, with $ 1.8 billion in revenue in 2021.

Its publisher miHoYo has continued to produce numerous updates, adding new islands, characters, and features to keep players engaged.

In September, the release of version 2.1 resulted in a five-fold increase in user spending on a week-to-week basis.

The “free-to-play” model

Other titles include the metaverse app

($ 1.3 billion),

(1.3 billion),

(1.2 billion).

The latter, published by

, achieved its best performance, more than five years after its launch.

Finally,

(1.2 billion) and

(1.1 billion) finish this ranking.

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A ninth mobile game could also exceed $ 1 billion. This is the manga

, developed by Cygames, which is approaching $ 965 million for this year, despite a launch last February and availability only in Japan.

All these games are based on a specific economic model, “

 ”.

Thus, users can access the games for free but must pay bonuses or options to enrich them.

For example, on

it is possible to buy a “

 ” at 1.99 euros to advance faster through the levels.

even offers a subscription of 10.49 euros per month to get perks and receive 300 UC Tokens, the currency of the app.