Video games are one of the most profitable genres that exist in the world of entertainment, with a large number of titles that have been placed in the market in a more than beneficial way for its developers, either on desktop consoles, hybrid or even PC, but there is also an underworld that has hit very hard in terms of profits collected, mobile devices, with a large number of titles that are among the most profitable worldwide, and now we have published some of the ones that have earned the most money in the last 5 years, with 82 games that have exceeded 15 billion Yen per year in this period.
Pokemon GO, Azur Lane and COD Mobile are among some of the most profitable video games of the last 5 years
One of the most important companies dedicated to monitoring statistics in the business world, known as Sensor Tower, officially published a few days ago a list where it placed the mobile video games that earned the most money in the last 5 years, surprising because in that list 82 titles have earned more than 15 billion Yen (just over 101 million dollars at the exchange rate) annually during this period, reaching numbers that show how these generate a large monetary compensation for developers.
Among the video games on this list we have titles that, in addition to being long-term projects, are well known in the gaming world, with names that stand out such as Pokémon GO, Nintendo’s hit that, although it does not have the excitement or popularity it had in 2016, still continues to be among the top earners. Also many video games of the gacha genre (Azur Lane, Fate GO or Honkai Impact 3rd) have managed to reach this figure, something expected if we know that most of their content can be accessed through microtransactions within the game, on the other hand, titles such as Call of Duty: Mobile or Candy Crush are also on the list.
In addition, these revenues are reported not only in the Asian market, from which several titles come from, but much of the profits are given thanks to the global market that several video games have, since of these 82 games, 30 are distributed in global markets, 28 mainly from the US market, 12 to Japanese and 9 to Chinese, while the rest are divided into local markets of each title. Among the most popular game categories are strategy games alongside RPGs.
Below is the official list published by Sensor Tower where we can see in detail the 82 video games that acquired more than 15 billion Yen per year during the last 5 years:
Part of the success of these titles is due to the fact that a lot of money is invested in advertising video games in regions such as the U.S. territory in order to maintain their leadership position. An example of this is Plarium Global, which spent around 80 million dollars to advertise its video game RAID: Shadow Legends in this market, achieving that the game not only recovers the investment, but also increases its profits to unexpected levels for anyone.
Finally, there are several renowned developers that dedicate a lot of resources so that their titles can obtain the expected profits and even exceed them by far, here we find names such as Tencent, Playrix and Activision Blizzard, which with their different video games have effectively reached millionaire figures. In the case of Tencent, titles such as King of Glory or PUBG Mobile have generated revenues that exceed $5.2 billion in earnings. With these data shared officially, and with the release of new titles that can reach these figures in the same way (Honkai Star Rail, Nikke, etc.) the world of video games, at least mobile ones, will continue to be very profitable.
