Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links earned $110 million in six months — almost three times more than Hearthstone
Mobile card battlers are on the rise right now. According to Sensor Tower, they became the fastest growing category in the strategy genre in the second quarter. And the highest-grossing title of the first half of the year turned out to be Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.The main thing from the report
In the second quarter, downloads of card battlers increased by 23% compared to the previous quarter.
- The main drivers of growth were Magic: The Gathering Arena and Mighty Party.Prior to that, a similar jump in downloads was observed in the third quarter of 2019.
- It was associated with the release of the autobattlers Auto Chess and Chess Rush, which generated 5 million downloads each during the quarter.Sensor Tower notes that the market for card battles is still relatively small compared to MOBA and 4X strategies.
- However, this category in the second quarter turned out to be almost the only one in the genre that showed a strong increase in downloads.Dynamics of downloads of mobile strategy subgenres (from the 1st quarter of 2019 to the 2nd quarter of 2021)
Initially, card battles were popular in Asia.
- In 2019, Japan accounted for 43% of the total revenue of games of this subgenre, and China accounted for 14%. However, today the situation has changed a lot. In the second quarter of 2021, the United States accounted for 27% of all card buttler revenues, while Japan’s share fell to 29%.Based on the results of the first six months of 2021, Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Duel Links turned out to be the undisputed leader in the subgenre. The game earned the most in Japan and the USA — 33% and 27% of all revenue, respectively.Revenue Yu-Gi-Oh!
- Duel Links for six months amounted to $110 million. Hearthstone is in second place with a big gap — a little more than $ 40 million. Mighty Party, WWE SuperCard and Shadowverse are also in the top 5 highest-grossing card battles.
The highest-grossing card battles for the first half of 2021
