Less than 2% of mobile releases in 2025 surpassed the milestone of 500,000 downloads — analysis
This conclusion was reached by the company Moloco.
Kingshot
According to Moloco's estimates, a total of more than 190,000 mobile games were released worldwide in 2025, but only a few achieved significant popularity. The company calculated that only 2,500 titles managed to reach at least half a million downloads.
Moloco separately analyzed the monetization situation of mobile games using a sample of 55 projects released between January 2024 and September 2025. Let's take a closer look at these observations.
- The 55 mobile games studied by Moloco earned approximately $1.5 billion from in-app purchases (IAP) in their first year.
- At launch, their IAP revenue was distributed more or less evenly among all groups of gamers, but over time, the share of income from the most generous users — the so-called "whales" — increased.
- Monetization for some games was initially oriented specifically towards "whales." In their case, "whales" accounted for 53.4% of revenue in the first month and jumped to 81.2% by the tenth month. For games with monetization aimed at a wider audience, the share of revenue from "whales" grew from 41.4% to 54.4% over ten months.
- The ARPPU (average revenue per paying user) size also gradually increased. In games focused on "whales," it increased on average by 250% over the year, while in games focused on a broader audience, it rose by 25%.
- In both types of games, about a third of paying users made purchases only once.
- Only 15% of "whales" in games focused on them made their first purchase in the release month. 64% of "whales" started spending money only in the third month after the game's release.
- Seven of the 55 mobile games studied by Moloco were classified as "breakthrough" games — they were in demand by gamers right at launch and continued to maintain popularity. As noted by analysts, these games were primarily striving to achieve a target ROAS (return on advertising spend) in the release month rather than focusing on CPI/CPA (cost per install/action).
- "Breakthrough" games deployed a larger number of ad creatives compared to regular games — on average, 93 creatives versus 37. Moreover, 47% of their creatives were launched between the seventh and eleventh months post-release, compared to 27% in the same period for other games.