Recently, Sensor Tower released the "2021 Game Profitability Report". The data shows that advertising is the most widely used way to make money, and this way is dominated by casual games.
The pass feature became the world's top revenue weapon, which was originally promoted by Epic Games' Fortnite and later became a key revenue method for many mobile games. Now that the feature has been further promoted, half of the world's best-selling games in 2021 have adopted Battle Passes in their monetization mechanisms, including Tencent's PUBG Mobile and Glory of Kings, as well as Mihayou's Original God.
While most of the popular games with passes are heavy, casual games are starting to add this feature, such as King's Candy Crush Saga and Playrix's Homescapes and Gardenscape.
Sensor Tower data shows that skipping ads is the most popular mechanic, driven by a large number of casual games, with 90% of games using this monetization method.
Although the NFT gaming market on the App Store and Google Play is relatively small compared to other monetization methods, this emerging area currently presents a wide variety of application types, from heavy gaming to casual gaming.
Not only is the card draw system popular and lucrative in Asia, but its profit model has also been successful in Western markets such as the United States, such as Protos and RAID: Shadow Legends.
In the United States, half of the most gold-sucking games that use the card drawing feature also use existing IPs, including the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Marvel series, which proves that IPs with a large number of famous characters can provide a strong foundation for the card drawing system.
Emerging markets for non-functional games and crypto mechanics on mobile phones are evolving and applying them to a range of new and existing mobile games. Of the top 10 downloaded games using blockchain technology, 5 were released in 2021, with the top ranking being WolfFun's Thetan Arena, which has been downloaded more than 8 million times to date. Games such as Animoca Brands' Crazy Defense Heroes have also tried to use nft.