Mobile (Gacha) Market Tracking

Vena · Apr 25, 2023

Since this is a general blindspot for our market discussions and in so far only a few of us really engage in this discussion as the topic can be rather esoteric to find information on unlike the broader VG market, @Astrogamer has been posting some data in MC threads for Japan, I thought it'd be nice to make a catch-all thread that focuses on tracking mobile (gacha) games more generally. So this thread will serve as a point of resource and data tracking.

We've quite a few big games we can track here: Genshin Impact, FGO, FEH, Uma Musume, NIKKE, Honkai Star Rail, Monster Strike, etc. More titles will also come out and you never know when an unknown or unexpected breakout hit might pop up. Obviously this isn't exhaustive data, many of the bigger games nowadays are starting to have clients on PC or consoles but it does give us a glimpse at trends.

This thread can serve both as a point of discussion and research+data postings, to give us a centralized resource! (Should be a thread of interest for @theprodigy, @Astrogamer, @Busaiku and others.)

COMMUNITY TRACKING POSTS (THREADMARKS):
Astromager's Weekly Japan ST Tracking Archive

TRACKING RESOURCES:
SensorTower
AppMagic
GachaGaming Subreddit Posts Monthly SensorTower Summaries
Game I, Japan Specific Resource (don't use their numbers as actual numbers)
4Gamer - Aggregates Weekly Sales from ST Data
BiliBili Content Creator/Mobile Market Insider

Additional resources courtesy of @Astrogamer:

Astrogamer said:
Some other resources
Data.ai (formerly known as AppAnnie) - The free account version provides similar data to Sensortower and Appmagic. There are some blog posts that cover the industry in a broad perspective
SensorTower JP blog - The English blog only gives the barest of details but the Japanese version continues to supply monthly global charts and releases blogs for various game's launches and milestones.
Mobilegamer.biz, Pocketgamer.biz - Similar mobile game industry news sites that generally utilize three main tracking resources. They generally have solid insights into the industry and occasionally supply numbers

Samsung Galaxy Gamers -> Resource for Player Count, an app on Samsung Devices; Playerbases are "app specific" for Samsung. If a title has multiple launchers across different regions, the player bases will be showed independently. For example, FGO and FGO JP have different launchers and thus show different populations. Conversely, Genshin Impact shows all players on the same app.

Red = Good, Green = Bad. The applied multipliers (under the numbers) are derived from insider knowledge though their veracity is unprovable. I added some labels for clarity.

These are powerful tools we can use to track relative or ballpark performance of titles. As I am sure I did not get every resource out there, feel free to let me know of useful links and tools to add!

Vena · Apr 25, 2023

Now applying the Samsung tracking to some popular titles. (If you'd like large titles added, let me know.)

This serves as a great way to see how big some of these games are and aren't even within the snapshot of the Samsung userbase. We can of course try to do some napkin math on these numbers and reverse-estimate from Samsung's marketshare the approximate mobile playerbases.

As "week" is an arbitrary time-stamp let it be known data tracking started on 4/25/2023.

biglo25 · Apr 25, 2023

curious how Honkai: Star Rail will perform

Current Mobile games i have downloaded: Azur Lane, Arknights, Blue Archive,Nikke, Honkai:Star Rail

Astrogamer · Apr 26, 2023

Some other resources
Data.ai (formerly known as AppAnnie) - The free account version provides similar data to Sensortower and Appmagic. There are some blog posts that cover the industry in a broad perspective
SensorTower JP blog - The English blog only gives the barest of details but the Japanese version continues to supply monthly global charts and releases blogs for various game's launches and milestones.
Mobilegamer.biz, Pocketgamer.biz - Similar mobile game industry news sites that generally utilize three main tracking resources. They generally have solid insights into the industry and occasionally supply numbers

Vena · Apr 26, 2023

Astrogamer said:
Some other resources
Data.ai (formerly known as AppAnnie) - The free account version provides similar data to Sensortower and Appmagic. There are some blog posts that cover the industry in a broad perspective
SensorTower JP blog - The English blog only gives the barest of details but the Japanese version continues to supply monthly global charts and releases blogs for various game's launches and milestones.
Mobilegamer.biz, Pocketgamer.biz - Similar mobile game industry news sites that generally utilize three main tracking resources. They generally have solid insights into the industry and occasionally supply numbers

Added this to the OP.

Vena · Apr 27, 2023

biglo25 said:
curious how Honkai: Star Rail will perform

Current Mobile games i have downloaded: Azur Lane, Arknights, Blue Archive,Nikke, Honkai:Star Rail

I can give you an early launch prognosis so far: huge in China, good to lukewarm opening everywhere else. For the marketing budget and general nature of MHY's gacha I expected it higher on revenue charts given the massive downloads too.

Will be interesting to track long-term past the honeymoon phase.

Day 1/2 release revenue so far (ST-All Rankings):
JP: #3
NA: #10
EU: #10-20's depending on market.
SK: #3
CN: #1

~~The fact that it's ranking under Azur Lane in JP says to me that #3 is not a particularly high bar revenue wise. Honestly kind of surprised by this one.~~ I am illiterate right before bed, Mahjong Souls. Not really sure how well this game does but it is during a big Collab.

We'll see where it goes over the next few days. Should still make quite a bit of money on its first month, where it goes from there is anyone's guess. Game will make absolute bank in China though, MHY's brand is insane there right now but other markets are likely to behave differently.

Astrogamer · Apr 27, 2023

It's ranking behind Mahjong Soul, not Azur Lane, which seems to be because of the Code Geass event. Pre-Golden Week tends to be the big update period for a bunch of mobile games, primarily for big events like FGO's annual collaboration event. That is surprisingly high for Mahjong Soul though it did do similar last year (#3 on 4/27/22) which had the Kaguya-sama collab
Looking at the iOS charts on SensorTower for 4/26, it's
NA: #2
CAN: #2
UK: #10
FR: #4
GER: #5
SK: #2

Vena · Apr 27, 2023

Astrogamer said:
It's ranking behind Mahjong Soul, not Azur Lane, which seems to be because of the Code Geass event. Pre-Golden Week tends to be the big update period for a bunch of mobile games, primarily for big events like FGO's annual collaboration event. That is surprisingly high for Mahjong Soul though it did do similar last year (#3 on 4/27/22) which had the Kaguya-sama collab
Looking at the iOS charts on SensorTower for 4/26, it's
NA: #2
CAN: #2
UK: #10
FR: #4
GER: #5
SK: #2

I shouldn't post right before bed, lmao. Dunno why I saw Azur Lane. I've edited my post for accuracy.

I don't use Gaming sub category, I look at All as it is far more informative relatively. That's where my numbers are from.

Edit:
NIKKE half-anni kicking off now, propelling it to third in JP. Should be a fairly big deal.

Astrogamer · Apr 27, 2023

Weekly SensorTower Japanese Mobile Rankings

Most Recent Rankings

This Week	Last Week	Title	DL Change	Rev Change
1	2	Last War: Survival	-2％	16％
2	5	Dragon Quest Walk	146％	109％
3	13	Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle	76％	190％
4	3	Honkai: Star Rail	20％	17％
5	6	Monster Strike	45％	49％
6	39	eFootball 2024	98％	383％
7	1	Uma Musume Pretty Derby	16％	-49％
8	7	Fate/Grand Order	-9％	-11％
9	9	Royal Match	21％	-10％
10	8	Puzzle & Dragons	9％	-14％
11	21	Genshin Impact	-12％	58％
12	14	Whiteout Survival	-2％	13％
13	31	Ensemble Stars!! Music	42％	95％
14	44	Monster Hunter Now	6％	170％
15	19	Knives Out	-9％	2％
16	23	Puzzle & Survival	-1％	13％
17	10	Goddess of Victory: NIKKE	-23％	-40％
18	22	Legend of Mushroom	-14％	-2％
19	18	Yokai Watch Puni Puni	-20％	-18％
20	16	Pro Baseball Spirits A	2％	-21％

War Inquisitor · Apr 28, 2023

Honkai Star Rail has surpassed 20M downloads in 1 day. not sure if I should make it a separate post.

Islander · Apr 28, 2023

War Inquisitor said:
Honkai Star Rail has surpassed 20M downloads in 1 day. not sure if I should make it a separate post.

It's really amusing to see this, considering that it's all everyone is talking about.
404 Game Re:Set released just before this, but got completely overshadowed by HSR. Judging by what I've played of 404, it's absolutely deserved. Should've moved the launch a couple weeks out of the way, Sega.

Daily top grossing ranking tracking (c/o Game-I):

Honkai Star Rail (iOS):
04/27 - 3rd
04/28 - 4th
404 Game Re:Set (iOS):
04/26 - 215th (estimate)
04/27 - 111th
04/28 - 169th

By the way, Rusalka's dropping today for Memento Mori. That should result in a big jump for it, though they show no indications of fixing the problems with the game that lead to heavy player churn. Wonder what's going to happen once the Half-Anniversary ends and it starts sliding down...

Vena · Apr 28, 2023

Islander said:
It's really amusing to see this, considering that it's all everyone is talking about.
404 Game Re:Set released just before this, but got completely overshadowed by HSR. Judging by what I've played of 404, it's absolutely deserved. Should've moved the launch a couple weeks out of the way, Sega.

Daily top grossing ranking tracking (c/o Game-I):

Honkai Star Rail (iOS):
04/27 - 3rd
04/28 - 4th
404 Game Re:Set (iOS):
04/26 - 215th (estimate)
04/27 - 111th
04/28 - 169th

By the way, Rusalka's dropping today for Memento Mori. That should result in a big jump for it, though they show no indications of fixing the problems with the game that lead to heavy player churn. Wonder what's going to happen once the Half-Anniversary ends and it starts sliding down...

The timing on SEGA's part was quite unfortunate, should really have moved to delay it. But they probably wanted to be out for GW for their local market whereas for HSR it's more of a happy coincidence to release into GW though that means it also has a lot of competition doing stuff right now and so a lot of noise during first blush impressions.

War Inquisitor said:
Honkai Star Rail has surpassed 20M downloads in 1 day. not sure if I should make it a separate post.

This number is entirely unsurprising given the scale of CN market preregistrations alone. The marketing for this game has been everywhere and constant, it's a ridiculous amount of money spent on pushing this out.

Should see it hitting 30 million soon enough with all of that considered.

--------------

A bit of news:

https://www.gematsu.com/2023/04/cygames-establishes-cygames-america-cygames-europe

Looks like Cygames is opening branches specifically for Europe and America, so we might be seeing some internally run localizations and global releases. Might have to do with Uma Musume or future title preparations.

--------------

Additional edit, but holy crap at Dokkan Battle. It has moved into the Top 5 in NA too. I really sleep on this game for how damn big it is.

Astrogamer · May 3, 2023

Pokémon Go monthly earnings have plummeted to their lowest in five years | VGC

The drop follows controversial changes to its Remote Raid passes…

www.videogameschronicle.com

Pokemon Go looks to be struggling as they try to move away from remote raids. While April doesn't have the benefit of Pokemon Day events, these drops seem pretty bad when haven't really succeeded with anything of their other games. For reference, SensorTower seems to have worse numbers for Niantic at around $33 million for April.

Vena · May 4, 2023

I've updated the player tracking sheet, and we can see now the explosive opening for Honkai: Star Rail, catapulting well above Genshin's steady-state of players. (I also threadmarked my post.)

Curiously but not surprisingly, it seems to also be eating into Genshin's revenue as the latter's new banner that released yesterday has posted lower than normal rankings and dropped immediately. This is not for a rerun but a new character.

Current State of Honkai: Star Rail Revenue Rankings (All Categories):
NA: #14
CAN: #17
JP: #4
UK: #43
FR: #22
GER: #10
SK: #7

Japan and China will be the dominant market for this game as it doesn't seem to have found a revenue footing like Genshin did in EU/NA.

Shirke · May 4, 2023

Vena said:
Curiously but not surprisingly, it seems to also be eating into Genshin's revenue as the latter's new banner that released yesterday has posted lower than normal rankings and dropped immediately. This is not for a rerun but a new character.

Just from playing, Star Rail has a lot of the exact same systems and monetization as Genshin, but with much more mobile-friendly QOL (Auto Battle, Only one running around the world Daily Mission compared to Genshin's four, etc.)

Overall appeal among general gaming population will be lower than Genshin, but I wonder if it can stay at least neck to neck in mobile revenue if the update structure will also be the same.

Astrogamer · May 4, 2023

To be fair, for NA, that is just behind the eternal top performers. Like most games at most reach struggle to hit App Store top 10 (Games), with I think the only other recent exception being Marvel Snap, which hits top 10 like once a month. Anything that isn't Candy Crush or Roblox or Royal Match struggles to break into the top 3. It isn't quite hitting as well as Genshin originally did but, hanging on this well is better than really any other mobile game can be expected to do.

I updated the Weekly Sensor Tower post, and Honkai Star Rail makes its debut at rank 13 with only one full day of tracking. It's only 2 positions behind Mahjong Soul which has an absurd revenue increase of 1574%. The other new game this week is Earth: Revival from NuVerse (publisher of Marvel Snap) at rank 36

Vena · May 4, 2023

So I was further curious on the social side of the impact for Star Rail and went looking at subreddit stats:

Unsurprised by the higher start from before launch since Genshin was unknown, will have to see where it goes from here but the title does also show signs of lower appeal in the West. Which makes sense because to a large degree Genshin's success was being a COVID-baby in the market and that has long since cooled off.

Astrogamer said:
To be fair, for NA, that is just behind the eternal top performers. Like most games at most reach struggle to hit App Store top 10 (Games), with I think the only other recent exception being Marvel Snap, which hits top 10 like once a month. Anything that isn't Candy Crush or Roblox or Royal Match struggles to break into the top 3. It isn't quite hitting as well as Genshin originally did but, hanging on this well is better than really any other mobile game can be expected to do.

I updated the Weekly Sensor Tower post, and Honkai Star Rail makes its debut at rank 13 with only one full day of tracking. It's only 2 positions behind Mahjong Soul which has an absurd revenue increase of 1574%. The other new game this week is Earth: Revival from NuVerse (publisher of Marvel Snap) at rank 36

Some of Genshin's banners do make it into the Top 10 and sometimes even into the Top 5... or well, they used to, but that hasn't happened since Yelan's first run before Sumeru dropped. But before her and at it's peak with Raiden, Genshin was able to hit the Top.

Shirke said:
Just from playing, Star Rail has a lot of the exact same systems and monetization as Genshin, but with much more mobile-friendly QOL (Auto Battle, Only one running around the world Daily Mission compared to Genshin's four, etc.)

Overall appeal among general gaming population will be lower than Genshin, but I wonder if it can stay at least neck to neck in mobile revenue if the update structure will also be the same.

The games have so many similarities in their systems that they feel almost made to appeal to the same people.

I suspect MHY will try to again "appeal to casual audiences" with HSR as with Genshin so their targets will be a similar audience all in all. Which is why I commented on HSR eating into Genshin's own audience/appeal/spending because it's a real possibility with such similar products.

I fully expect HSR to be a smaller title (how much smaller is unknown) but successful. I'm also curious if MHY just ends up mostly splitting their own audience without really attracting anyone new because all of the woes of Genshin that would have chased someone out of Genshin are all still there and in terms of that anime appeal game there's obvious self-competition on the high profile side between HSR and Genshin now.

Vena · May 11, 2023

The latest BiliBili video of mobile revenue is up, here: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1z24y1T7df/?spm_id_from=333.999.0.0 If there's any specific titles people are interested in tracking, I'd recommend to join us in this thread and track the title as we're tracking various items and we can even bookmark it.

It's a bit too much data to post all of it, so I will focus on the big ones or ones I pick.

Here's HSR's first report vs. Genshin's first, MHY has come a long way:

While HSR's numbers have been steadily dropping in most markets, the game seems to have stuck well to JP market but this seems to have come at the cost of hitting Genshin pretty hard as it's most recent banner with a new character has been doing quite poorly in Japan. Though this banner is doing poorly everywhere and to a degree HSR is eating Genshin's tail.

Genshin's been having weak monthly results (for Genshin) on global for quite a few months now. The past three months are some of the worst results for global since the early release period.

----

I've also updated the weekly player count sheet here: https://www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threads/mobile-gacha-market-tracking.1544/#post-153742

CloverNotes · May 11, 2023

Thank you for making a thread dedicated to this topic.

Astrogamer · May 16, 2023

Saw this report https://www.gamerefinery.com/mobile-game-market-review-April-2023/ via Pocketgamer. Interesting overview of market moves during April. I didn't realize Scopely had started doing the 3rd party store currency with Marvel Strike Force which will likely affect how their titles perform in the future. They just launched Monopoly Go! last month which is basically a gambling game but using a board of Monopoly instead. It has been steadily moving up the rankings so it should be another mainstay in Western markets.
Beyond Honkai, they also mention Dark Tales, a new idle RPG for Japan. It has had a pretty steady performance since its launch in mid-April, not too different from how Memento Mori performed.

Vena · May 18, 2023

I've updated the player tracker in my threadmarked post.

Today is the first new banner for HSR so tomorrow I (or someone) can post the first day performance across the various markets.

Astrogamer said:
Saw this report https://www.gamerefinery.com/mobile-game-market-review-April-2023/ via Pocketgamer. Interesting overview of market moves during April. I didn't realize Scopely had started doing the 3rd party store currency with Marvel Strike Force which will likely affect how their titles perform in the future. They just launched Monopoly Go! last month which is basically a gambling game but using a board of Monopoly instead. It has been steadily moving up the rankings so it should be another mainstay in Western markets.
Beyond Honkai, they also mention Dark Tales, a new idle RPG for Japan. It has had a pretty steady performance since its launch in mid-April, not too different from how Memento Mori performed.

Nice to see a more robust report that actually says more about the western markets than... the usual nothing, haha. Good find!

Faeldrin · May 18, 2023

According to the HonkaiLab website, Seele's banner (in HSR) is estimated to have generated over $40M in revenue in China and on iOS alone.
For comparison, Raiden's first banner in Genshin ended up at around $33M from what I can read.

Vena · May 18, 2023

Faeldrin said:
According to the HonkaiLab website, Seele's banner (in HSR) is estimated to have generated over $40M in revenue in China and on iOS alone.
For comparison, Raiden's first banner in Genshin ended up at around $33M from what I can read.

That source sucks. Don't use it.

That said, Seele likely did do more than Raiden in CN as MHY's audience there has only kept growing and Seele is the big first unit. (Incidentally, hearing a lot of disappointments about Jing Yuan who just released but he will likely also make tons of money just on the current honeymoon hype.)

But Raiden in total eclipses everything that has come since her original release because she was *massive* in global markets then but Genshin (and MHY's brand in general) has generally slid downwards in non-CN markets. This disparity has occured in Genshin too where Raiden's banner has been beaten by many subsequent banners and Nahida's big release but in global markets the results get worse. So nothing has ever beaten peak Raiden.

Though that sight does show us a fun little thing I've been talking about (note ignore the numbers, just look at the general rankings as that is how these numbers are "conjured up"), is that HSR has really impacted Genshin:

Baizhu is a brand new unit and Ganyu is very popular, but this is the worst double-banner ever. There's really nothing to explain this sudden dip other than HSR sucking the air out of the room for a highly crossed over audience (rather than one grown out). And one of the worst performing banners Genshin has seen in ages by rank (again ignore the $$$ numbers, but the ranking daily for the game was just that low in the CN iOS market). The same can be seen by looking at SensorTower for various markets to see that Genshin has dropped significantly. In NA, for example, it is sitting well below the Top 100 rank for grossing at #133 which is *very low* and did not peak high on release of the new banner.

Faeldrin · May 18, 2023

Vena said:
That source sucks. Don't use it.

Hmm, well if you say so, okay I guess.

Though if you don't mind me asking, how can we know whether a source about mobile market data is reliable or not?

Vena · May 18, 2023

Faeldrin said:
Hmm, well if you say so, okay I guess.

Though if you don't mind me asking, how can we know whether a source about mobile market data is reliable or not?

Pretty much all of the ones who give numbers daily with $ attached are not really trustworthy. Though a lot of this whole thing is based on guess work even in the case of SensorTower.

For this one in particular, they basically ascribe a flat number to Rank #N on CN iOS and just extrapolate based on time at #N or whatever.

Vena · May 19, 2023

Looking at Honkai: Star Rail's first new banner in various markets on iOS. Notably, it apparently broke the CN top-up on release day but conversely have seen lesser word of mouth on the new unit so we have some interesting competing forces.

Also note that due to delay between markets on how MHY releases banners, there's a bit of an offset in what is "Day 1" and so on.

Region:	Day 1 (05/17/2023):	Day 2:	Day 3:
US	13	4	7
CAN	15	3	6
JP	1	1	4
UK	17	20	24
FR	7	10	11
GER	13	16	29
SK	1	3	3
CN	1	2	2

The current unit is the "big" unit for Space China region and the initial top-up crashing release speaks to that but the lesser word of mouth might have cut off its tail as seeing Honor of Kings retaking 1 rather quickly gives us a decent barometer on the banner and Genshin usually holds its #1 spot in CN iOS for several days vs. the more steady HoK.

This leads me to my next point: I'm noticing is that banners don't have the same "stay at the top" as Genshin does in its strongest markets or how it once did in NA/EU markets. At the same time as these results, though, Genshin has been doing terribly in every market. Of course, it's only two data points for now.

MHY has effectively moved a large amount of their audience from one product to another in the short-term. Which is... definitely a bit strange to witness and they are now competing with themselves.

Faeldrin · May 20, 2023

Vena said:
MHY has effectively moved a large amount of their audience from one product to another in the short-term. Which is... definitely a bit strange to witness and they are now competing with themselves.

There may be merit in regularly releasing new games to maintain mindshare and spending at a high level, even if that creates self-competition. In the long term, the genre and gameplay of the two games are quite different, so I imagine that after Star Rail's honeymoon phase, a bunch of Genshin players will come back and we'll see a more balanced split (Fontaine expansion also coming in a few months).

Or it's because the Honkaiverse is miHoYo's passion project and they're trying to pull people in.

Busaiku · May 20, 2023

While it has been down since, Genshin Impact did experience some highs (not record breaking, but bucking downward trends) in February and April.
September and October represented some of the lowest months worldwide (mainly due to weaker spending in CN). While we don't have May data, it is important to note that March and April were still stronger months.
EDIT - I actually rechecked this, and this is incorrect. These (April and March) were some of the weakest months overall. Sorry, was browsing mobile and got some pages mixed up, I'm assuming.

The strange thing is those months (~~September~~ and October) being weaker months, despite the shop resets.
This was countered by a strong November and December though.
EDIT - September wasn't hat bad, October still was though.

So, until we get May data at least, I don't think we should chock up the game as it's slump period just yet.
Though once actual data does come out, I would assume it would be.

Vena · May 23, 2023

Some minor notes on interesting market movements:

Arknights hit #1 on iOS in Japan.
Aether Gazer (an Action game akin to Honkai Impact and Punishing Gray Ravens) has hit #1 on JP downloads.

---------

Also here's an updated tracking on Honkai: Star Rail's second banner (in (#) are end of day numbers as reported on ST if they changed as of the last of my posts):

Region:	Day 1 (05/17/2023):	Day 2:	Day 3:	Day 4:	Day 5:	Day 6:	Day 7:
US	13	4	7 (11)	19	30	36	38
CAN	15	3	6 (7)	15	25	25	24
JP	1	1	4	5	7	8	9
UK	17	20	24 (30)	49	64	60	63
FR	7	10	11 (15)	27	44	50	53
GER	13	16	29 (34)	44	61	58	79
SK	1	3	3 (5)	6	10	10	13
CN	1	2	2 (3)	4	4	4	5

I'll be honest, I was expecting more for the very first post-launch banner.

theprodigy · May 23, 2023

why are you using NA instead of US when you even have Canada listed separately lol

Astrogamer · May 23, 2023

Mixi also launched Cubic Stars, landing at 6 (2 in Games behind Aether Gazer) on the JP iOS downloads
Dark Tales earned $10 million in 20 days

ダークテイルズが日本市場で好スタート、リリース20日間でアジア市場全体の25％以上に当たる1,000万ドル以上の収益を記録

日本で2023年4月にリリースされたカードRPG『ダークテイルズ～鏡と狂い姫』が好調な滑り出しを見せました。日本以外の一部の市場では以前にリリースされていますが、日本市場での好発進は際立っており、リリースから20日間でアジア収益シェアの25％以上を占めるほどに急成長しています。

sensortower.com

Vena · May 23, 2023

theprodigy said:
why are you using NA instead of US when you even have Canada listed separately lol

Good question, but yes I mean US. I'll fix that after work haha.

----

Edit: Fixed.

Busaiku · May 24, 2023

Yes, Star Rail seems to be more skewed towards Chinese and Japanese sensibilities than even Genshin Impact.
I'm not expecting the 1.3x of the first week to hold through, but it will be interesting to see how it falls after we get first month figures.

Vena · May 26, 2023

While MHY somehow, again, managed to screw up their Western stream this morning. It appears that there is in fact no announcement for the console version of Star Rail in the near future. The leaks had said 1.1 but that seems to have fallen through in some form or other. Or was never true in the first place.

There was an unverified interview floating around a week or two ago that said the game would see a planet per year and the current pace makes that much more believable though I question the strategy, the game is quite simple and content has been fairly lite for the release. But 1.1 appears to be in-line with the interview as the pace seems to be quite slow, similar to Genshin but without the open-world to pad out the playtime significantly.

On the topic of Genshin the new banner has launched (reruns) and it is not posting impressive numbers in any non-CN market. Which isn't terribly surprising, the current lull will likely last until Fontaine. I had noted (on Era) during the time of Elden Ring that I had noticed incidental/coincidental start of declines in the West for Genshin, and I wonder if the lull + TotK and a slew of other games won't take another bite out of the game's footprint in the West. (And of course, on-going self-competition with HSR.)

----

I have also been a bit busy this week and into next, so I didn't get a chance to update the player tracker on Wednesday but I will do a double update next week.

Vena · May 31, 2023

Just going to quote @Lite_Agent but this is one of those notable "release and kill" releases, lasted only 5 months:

Aniplex just pulled a Level-5 and are shutting down World II World (another mobage) on July 31st, barely 5 months after launch (February 22nd).

Astrogamer · May 31, 2023

崩壊：スターレイルが世界収益1億ドルをリリース10日間で達成、原神を2,000万ドル近く上回る収益ペース

2023年4月にリリースされたモバイルRPG『崩壊：スターレイル』がリリースから10日間で世界収益1億ドルを達成しました。タイトルからもわかるとおり、同作のパブリッシャーmiHoYoの崩壊シリーズの一作で、スペースファンタジーRPGです。中国、日本以外でもアメリカや韓国市場でも高収益を達成しており、グローバルで好スタートとなっています。

sensortower.com

Sensor Tower says Honkai Star Rail made $100 million in 10 days. $20m more than Genshin in the same time period

Honkai: Star Rail has already earned over $120m on mobile alone - here's how - Mobilegamer.biz

Hoyoverse has taken the progression and monetisation systems that made Genshin Impact so successful into its new turn-based battler.

mobilegamer.biz

Meanwhile, Appmagic reports $120 million over 4 weeks.
Looks like the difference is that Appmagic estimates a much lower China share

Busaiku · May 31, 2023

Doesn't Appmagic wholly estimate their reports based on placements and the like?
Obviously SensorTower does include their estimations in there as well, but they do also get actual data too.

In the case of the SensorTower data, they did estimate a 30% growth versus Genshin Impact in the first 7 days, so its growth seemed to slow a bit the days after (as Genshin Impact was blowing up in comparison).

Vena · Jun 1, 2023

Some early numbers are coming around from SensorTower. Also some figures come from the article on 4gamer linked by @Astrogamer here: https://www.installbaseforum.com/fo...s-week-20-2023-may-15-may-21.1651/post-163382

NIKKE continues to make a lot of money, making nearly MHY-levels of money and it is not even released in China at this time.
Uma, FGO continue to be massive titles in JP.
Heaven's Burn Red, Arknights, Memento Mori, and Blue Archive continue to be strong earners.
Genshin is down to ~34m global, a 14m drop MoM but also continuing the slide that's been happening since mid-2022.
HSR posts a whopping 81m on Global and 56m on CN iOS, ST reports the market share to be overwhelmingly CN+JP, and even more heavily CN leaning.
- CN: 41.6%
- JP: 22.1%
- US: 12%
- SK: 7.3%
- Taiwan: 3.2%
- HK: 2.8%
- Germany: 1.8%

Reference to Genshin's first month can be found here, pulling in over 250m: https://sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-first-month-revenue

China is the largest market for player spending in Genshin Impact, generating more than $82 million to date, or 33.5 percent of total revenue to date. Outside of China, the title has picked up close to $163 million, or 66.5 percent of all player spending. Japan ranks No. 2 with close to $59 million, or 24 percent, while the U.S. rounds out the top three with close to $45 million, or 18.3 percent.

We can also look at where the current banner sits for HSR which seems to have lost *a little of the wind in its sales* but that is to be expected with the honeymoon coming to a close and a potentially less interesting banner due to the target audience mismatch with the character. (Note the current numbers are actually a little higher than one or two days prior/normal as there's a store refresh that happens on the month roll-over for MHY games.)

Region:	Day 1 (05/17/2023):	Day 2:	Day 3:	Day 4:	Day 5:	Day 6:	Day 7:	Day 15:
US	13	4	7 (11)	19	30	36	38	37
CAN	15	3	6 (7)	15	25	25	24	43
JP	1	1	4	5	7	8	9	16
UK	17	20	24 (30)	49	64	60	63	116
FR	7	10	11 (15)	27	44	50	53	74
GER	13	16	29 (34)	44	61	58	79	83
SK	1	3	3 (5)	6	10	10	13	19
CN	1	2	2 (3)	4	4	4	5	11

We'll have a better grasp with Silver Wolf's banner in a week which is a very "hyped" release, and we can see how that banner opens and its legs.

Busaiku said:
Doesn't Appmagic wholly estimate their reports based on placements and the like?
Obviously SensorTower does include their estimations in there as well, but they do also get actual data too.

In the case of the SensorTower data, they did estimate a 30% growth versus Genshin Impact in the first 7 days, so its growth seemed to slow a bit the days after (as Genshin Impact was blowing up in comparison).

Much larger marketing and MHY's brand growth on "The Genshin Devs" vs. organic growth, the former resulted in a bigger "out of the gate" performance. MHY definitely pulled in a lot of their own audience with the familiarity of HSR (to Genshin) and monetized them well but this has obviously come at the expense of Genshin.

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Once I am back at my home computer, I'll update the player tracker numbers which I have written down but haven't made it home yet hah.

Busaiku · Jun 1, 2023

With the $42 million it made in April, that puts the first 35 days at $177 million.
So it went from 30% over Genshin Impact during the first week to over 30% lower.

Still a mega hit, no doubt, but will not be the cultural phenomenon.

Vena · Jun 2, 2023

Updated the tracking sheet on Samsung Galaxy Gamers, the streams of Genshin and HSR are about to cross and DB Legends is shooting up (anniversary?).

Astrogamer · Jun 2, 2023

Vena said:
Updated the tracking sheet on Samsung Galaxy Gamers, the streams of Genshin and HSR are about to cross and DB Legends is shooting up (anniversary?).

Yes, the DB Legends peak for both Japan and US started on 5/27 and looking at it that is when the 5th anniversary started

Vena · Jun 2, 2023

Golden Week's Top 10 revenue for Japan.

FGO and MS remain at the top despite launch + honeymoon spending on HSR. MHY is the top total publisher for the week with sum total of HSR and Genshin.

Vena · Jun 7, 2023

Some mobile market stuff for Wednesday. I'll also update my player tracker from SSGG when I get home form work, a spoiler: HSR and Genshin are within 12k players as HSR continues to steadily drop.

GachaGaming's Monthly SensorTower stats:
ROCKMAN X DiVE Taiwan/JP servers to EoS on September 27, 2023
- https://www.4gamer.net/games/470/G047075/20230607031/
OUTERPLANE is updating it's gacha as well as other announced large changes by the developers: https://page.onstove.com/outerplane/en/view/9514970
Aether Gazer had a good opening month (week) and it's second new character banner has started but it doesn't seem to be making too much of a splash.
Honkai: Star Rail had a great first month and it's new banner just launched for the much hyped SilverWolf.
Genshin Impact had its worst month ever as it continues to see it's sales canabilized by HSR and an extended drought. It will rebound when the next region is added in 2-3ish months.

Since it makes for a good comparison, I thought I'd track SilverWolf's banner in HSR over a few days.

Silver Wolf's Banner for HSR:

Region:	Day 0 (12 Hours)
US	4
CAN	4
JP	1
UK	22
FR	11
GER	13
SK	1
CN	1

Looks to be tracking around the same as Jing Yuan so far, but Jing Yuan had a fairly weak "tail" and this is a much more hyped release and popular "expy" from Honkai.

Jing Yuan's Banner Performance for HSR:

Region:	Day 1 (05/17/2023):	Day 2:	Day 3:	Day 4:	Day 5:	Day 6:	Day 7:	Day 15:
US	13	4	7 (11)	19	30	36	38	37
CAN	15	3	6 (7)	15	25	25	24	43
JP	1	1	4	5	7	8	9	16
UK	17	20	24 (30)	49	64	60	63	116
FR	7	10	11 (15)	27	44	50	53	74
GER	13	16	29 (34)	44	61	58	79	83
SK	1	3	3 (5)	6	10	10	13	19
CN	1	2	2 (3)	4	4	4	5	11

Busaiku · Jun 8, 2023

Surprisingly, the May drop for Genshin Impact outside of China was not as dramatic as I'd expected. I would assume that it is more likely that revenue is primarily made up outside of Asia in general.
But that drop in China is also unprecedented.

It seems like because Star Rail had a bigger impact in China and Japan, it drew more away from Genshin Impact. Whereas its relatively more "tepid" reception in the West allowed Genshin Impact to fare a bit better, with more dedicated players continuing to spend.

Vena · Jun 8, 2023

Busaiku said:
Surprisingly, the May drop for Genshin Impact outside of China was not as dramatic as I'd expected. I would assume that it is more likely that revenue is primarily made up outside of Asia in general.
But that drop in China is also unprecedented.

It seems like because Star Rail had a bigger impact in China and Japan, it drew more away from Genshin Impact. Whereas its relatively more "tepid" reception in the West allowed Genshin Impact to fare a bit better, with more dedicated players continuing to spend.

Global had less to fall, partly. CN fall will be huge once we see the numbers from the BiliBili poster (likely a NetEase exec) since CN drop of 24m or so is from just the iOS store but with Android it might be a MoM drop of something like 50-60m. Staggering but also much higher ceiling than global has had in months.

I think your analysis on the market "hotness" for HSR is apt, and we can see that with Silver Wolf's banner as well which continues to show the stronger eastern market tilt of the game that could also be seen with Jing Yuan.

-----

Silver Wolf's Banner for HSR:

Region:	Day 0 (12 Hours)	Day 1 (24 Hours) 06/07/2023	Day 2 (Mid-Day)
US	4	5	12
CAN	4	5	8
JP	1	1	1
UK	22	21	34
FR	11	10	22
GER	13	14	30
SK	1	1	2
CN	1	1	1

War Inquisitor · Jun 8, 2023

Happy to see nikke doing well considering what a phenomenal job they did for the half-year anniversary.
As for genshin, I wonder if the Kazuha/alhaitham banner and the expected Eula Banner in 3.8 can increase revenue, especially the second considering Eula has been absent from the game for over 500 days

Astrogamer · Jun 8, 2023

A new GameRefinery post for May

Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review May 2023

We're almost halfway through 2023, and the mobile market continues to power along with several major titles introducing exciting new features to drive player engagement and boost revenue.

www.gamerefinery.com

Highlights include League of Legends: Wild Rift changing its monetization with the Hextech Chests, causing the game to spike in revenue and Brawl Stars changing its in-game shop to feature nearly every cosmetic rather than it changing daily, while noting that Peridot (Niantic's new game) and Lord of the Rings: Heroes of the Middle-Earth (EA's new game from the team that made SW: Galaxy of Heroes) were underperforming in the 200s-300s. Torchlight Infinite has been performing well in China and Black Clover M has been performing well in Japan

Vena · Jun 8, 2023

Updated the HSR numbers on the banner tracking. The Western market's low/short attention span for new banners seems to be repeating from Jing Yuan's banner three weeks ago.

War Inquisitor said:
Happy to see nikke doing well considering what a phenomenal job they did for the half-year anniversary.
As for genshin, I wonder if the Kazuha/alhaitham banner and the expected Eula Banner in 3.8 can increase revenue, especially the second considering Eula has been absent from the game for over 500 days

I don't think any re-run will do better than the current low "baseline" of sorts, general interest is just low and I don't think reruns are going to help that. I think we'll see the game treading water for a while until the next region releases but how high it gets/how many players are "lost" from the drought permanently will be interesting to see.

While CN market has been growing through the 3.X patches of Sumeru relative to 2.X, the global numbers have only gone down relative to 2.X. I could see this market split continue to diverge.

NIKKE is indeed doing very well, and much like Genshin does not have its PC players or revenue tracked and isn't even released in China at the moment. It is doing *very* well.

Djehuty · Jun 8, 2023

Honestly genshins weak months are entirely deserved, the last 4 updates have been pretty terrible to okay. A far cry from early sumeru and late inazuma where it was an insane run of amazing updates.

I’m imagining that they are preparing in a big way for Fontaine, especially since it’s more traditionally popular aesthetic than a weird middle eastern mish mash.

Faeldrin · Jun 10, 2023

I know it's much more niche than their latest games, but do we have data on miHoYo's Honkai Impact 3rd?