Recently, foreign media mobilegamer.biz compiled the list of the world's top 30 mobile game publishers with the highest revenue in 2022 according to the data of the third-party data website AppMagic. Among them, Tencent Games, NetEase Games and Mihayou dominated the top three, and the three of them together created an annual revenue of up to 10.347 billion US dollars.
Seven Chinese companies made the list, and Tencent NetEase Mihayou took the top three
Not surprisingly, Tencent topped the list.
With the top-ranked "Honor of Kings" and the second-ranked Peace Elite (including the overseas version of PUBG Mobile), Tencent topped the list with an annual revenue of US$6.337 billion, of which "Honor of Kings" alone contributed US$2.2 billion, and has grown with an average annual revenue of US$460 million since its revenue exceeded US$1 billion in 2017.
Peace Elite contributed $1.73 billion, including $1.27 billion for the domestic version and about $460 million for the overseas version. However, compared to $2.02 billion in 2021, the game's revenue in 2022 is down by about $300 million. IN ADDITION TO THESE TWO GAMES, TENCENT'S NEW GAME "GODDESS OF VICTORY: NIKKE" RELEASED LAST YEAR IS JUST AS STRONG AS ITS ABILITY TO ATTRACT MONEY. The game has generated more than $170 million in global revenue in just two months since its launch on November 4 to December 31, with the Japanese market accounting for 58%, more than half. South Korea and the United States followed with 20% and 15% respectively. At present, the game has not yet been launched on the national server.
NetEase ranked second, with global mobile game revenue of $2.29 billion in 2022.
Among them, the highest income is NetEase's old IP "Fantasy Westward Journey" mobile game. The game went live in 2015 and has been running smoothly with around $570 million after reaching a revenue peak of $647 million in 2016. And $600 million in 2022 is the game's third-highest revenue year.
NetEase's second-highest grossing mobile game is Operation Wilderness, which earned $228 million in 2022. Interestingly, according to AppMagic, 31% of downloads are in China and 25% in Japan during the game's current lifecycle. However, the Japanese market accounts for 92% of the game's revenue, and the Chinese market accounts for only 7%, which also shows the strong ability of Japanese users to pay. NetEase's third mobile game is "Diablo: Immortal" national service. The game has generated $168 million in revenue for NetEase since its launch in July 2022 (since the game's international server publisher is Blizzard, NetEase's revenue is only counted as national servers). In addition, NetEase has three mobile games with revenue of more than $100 million in 2022, namely "Destination of the Land" with $161 million, "After Tomorrow" with $141 million, and "Onmyoji" with $104 million.
Mihayou followed in third place, with total global revenue of nearly $1.72 billion in 2022, most of which came from Genshin's $1.56 billion. Then came $130 million for Honkai 3. It's worth noting that the Japanese market only accounts for 5% of Genshin's total downloads, but 22% of its total revenue. Similarly, Japan accounted for only 6% of Honkai 3 downloads, but contributed 17% of the total revenue. In addition, South Korea accounted for 4% of Honkai 3 downloads, but contributed 12% of revenue.
In addition to these three Chinese game companies, Lingxi Interactive Entertainment ($829 million), Sanqi Interactive Entertainment ($827 million), FunPlus ($746 million) and Lilith ($655 million) made the Top 30 list, all within the top 20. Not counting Supercell, a total of 7 Chinese companies made the Top 30 list.
Entry thresholds: $860 million for the Top 10 and $450 million for the Top 30
The barrier to entry for the list is usually the data that the industry cares about. Let's take a look at the entry thresholds for the different ranking ranges of this list.
The entry threshold for the Top 10 is $860 million. In tenth place is Roblox, the only multiplayer online game, Roblox. The company slipped from a whopping $958 million in revenue in 2021 to $862 million in 2022. However, the company's annual revenue in 2019 was only $364 million, and by 2020, it had enjoyed the epidemic dividend, and its revenue immediately doubled to $838 million.
The companies ranked 4-9 in the overall list are:
In fourth place is Playrix, which is from Russia but is based in Ireland. The company's mobile game revenue in 2022 was US$1.65 billion, of which the top four mobile games by revenue were the match-3 game "Dream Home" with $489 million, the match-3 game "Dream Garden" with $429 million, the match-3 game "Fantasy Aquarium" with $357 million, and the business simulation game Dream Town with $327 million;
The fifth Swedish company King. The company is known for the classic elimination puzzle game Candy Saga. In 2022, the company's total revenue reached $1.52 billion, of which Candy Saga alone contributed $1 billion. This was followed by the same series of Candy Soda Saga, which earned $287 million in annual revenue;
The sixth ranked South Korean company NCSoft. The company earned $1.2 billion in total revenue in 2022 with the mobile games Lineage W of the Lineage series, $407 million for Lineage M, and $183 million for Lineage 2M. Of this amount, $874 million in revenue came entirely from the local market in South Korea;
Seventh-ranked Japanese company Bandai Namco. Like South Korea's NCSoft, Bandai generated $1.17 billion in revenue last year, of which $774 million came from the Japanese market. The company's top four revenue are two Dragon Ball-themed games, namely "Dragon Ball Z: Burst Wars" with $368 million and "Dragon Ball: Legend of Guild Wars" with $184 million, and two "One Piece" themed games, namely "One Piece: Bounty Hunter" with $120 million and "One Piece: Treasure Hunt" with $107 million;
Ranked eighth Finnish mobile gaming company Supercell. As a mobile game company that has been operating stably, the company's revenue in 2022 decreased by $200 million from 2021, from $1.25 billion to $1.05 billion. The decrease in revenue came mainly from two games, Clash Royale and Brawl in the Wild.
Clash Royale reached $292 million in revenue in 2021, but dropped to $225 million in 2022. "Brawl" dropped from $326 million in 2021 to $182 million in 2022. Unlike these two revenue declines, the company's top-grossing game, Clash of Clans, rose slightly, from 485 million the year before to 496 million last year. In addition, "Cartoon Farm" has also increased to 133 million. The company's last game released globally was Brawl Brawl 4 years ago. In 2022, the company even halted two projects;
and Zynga, the ninth-ranked U.S.-based social gaming company. With $260 million in contributions from the hit match-3+ RPG Empires & Puzzles and $136 million from strategy puzzle Merge Dragons!), the company reached $888 million in revenue in 2022. It is worth mentioning that the popular game "FarmVille" on Facebook that year (also produced by the company. Although Zynga never produced as popular a game as FarmVille, it still had a number of games that were good at attracting money, earning between $25 million and $70 million a year, such as Wizard of Oz Slots for $67 million, Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells for $65 million, Golf Rival for $59 million, and Hit It Rich!, $55 million, etc.
In addition, AppMagic announced the list of 11-30 (below), from this list, we can see that the entry threshold of the Top 20 is $620 million, and the entry threshold of the Top 30 is $450 million. Konami, Garena, Playtika, Netstone, GungHo and other well-known manufacturers have all made the list.
11-30 people:
11: Square Enix $847.5 million
12: Lingxi Interactive Entertainment $829 million
13: Moon Active $828 million
14: 37 Interactive Entertainment $827 million
15: Konami $786 million
16: FunPlus $746 million
17: Niantic $713 million
18: Cygames $662 million
19: Lilith $655 million
20: Xflag $620 million
21: Garena: $610 million
22: Aniplex: $579 million
23: Playtika: $574 million
24: Scopely: $563 million
25: Netstone: $508 million
26: Product Madness: $493 million
27: Nexon: $485 million
28: EA: $475 million
29: SpinX Games: $461 million
30: GungHo: $450 million