App Annie Index: Games - Racing Games Drive Summer Success

The App Annie Games Index brings you the hottest mobile gaming properties across both the iOS App Store and Google Play based on market data from App Annie Intelligence. To find out what’s happening with apps outside of games, please check out our July 2013 Apps Index

Three Games Race Their Way into the Top 10

July saw the emergence of two new racing games and the return of one familiar app. It wouldn’t be a summer Games Index without a new movie-based game making its debut in the rankings, and July’s film-related game was Turbo Racing League. The game, based on the DreamWorks animated movie about a snail who discovers he has super-speed, emerged as the 9th most downloaded game in the iOS App Store in July. Electronic Arts’ Real Racing 3 broke back into the Top 10 after delivering a substantial update that introduced a new game mode and luxury brand models. While Turbo Racing League and Real Racing 3 generated considerable downloads in the iOS App Store, Doodle Mobile’s Fast Racing 3D became the 3rd most downloaded game on Google Play in July.

Children’s Game Publishers Invade iTunes for Summer Break

As schools started summer break, children’s game publishers began climbing the top publisher rankings by iOS App Store monthly downloads. Tiny Piece, Disney, Ninjafish Studios, and TabTale each published successful games primarily aimed at kids.

LINE Games Populate the Google Play Revenue Rankings

LINE Pokopang leaped 79 spots to join LINE WIND runner and LINE POP in the Top 10 grossing Google Play games in July. LINE was the only publisher with more than one game in the ranking and ended the month as the #2 ranked publisher by Google Play monthly revenue. While LINE was climbing the Google Play monthly revenue rankings, they also released Q2 financial figures showing investors that LINE’s game revenue increased 53% from Q1 to Q2 in 2013.

 

 

The popularity of Despicable Me: Minion Rush kept Gameloft at the top of the iOS App Store publisher rankings by downloads in July. On the heels of the success of their Iron Man 3 and Despicable Me 2 games, Gameloft announced that they are working with Marvel on a game for the upcoming sequel to the Thor franchise. Even before this summer’s blockbuster movie apps, Gameloft frequently worked with the film industry to publish apps for other movies such as The Amazing Spider-Man, Fast Five, Men in Black 3, Iron Man 2, Avatar, Epi
c, Shrek Forever After, Ice Age, and The Dark Knight Rises. With such strong ties to popular film franchises, it’s no wonder Gameloft surpassed 10 million fans on Facebook in mid-July.

Children’s game publisher TabTale climbed twelve spots in July to become the 7th most downloaded publisher in the iOS App Store based on games. TabTale’s growth was driven by their fashion makeover app Design It!, medical role-playing game Doctor X - Med School, and ice cream maker game Ice Cream D’Lite. Sagi Schliesser, CEO and Co-Founder TabTale, explained to App Annie their philosophy behind producing these games: "At TabTale, we are extremely proud of our achievements over the past several months, including the fact that our apps have resonated with so many people. We believe that our accomplishments are proof that investing in our team and technology is a key driver of our success. Ultimately these investments were made in the service of producing engaging, imaginative, and edifying content that both kids and parents love. This is our ‘secret sauce,’ and we are excited about the big things we have planned next."

Children’s game publishers have quietly emerged in the iOS App Store and accounted for four of the Top 10 publishers by monthly downloads in July. From January through April, when kids had school and homework to occupy their time, only one children’s game publisher ranked in the top publishers by downloads for the iOS App Store. Once school began letting out for summer, two children’s game publishers made the Top 10 ranking in May, three made it in June, and four made it in July: Tiny Piece at #3, Disney at #5, TabTale at #7, and Ninjafish Studios at #8.

Although many publishers have released games that could appeal to children, Tiny Piece, Disney, TabTale, and Ninjafish Studios designed games that appealed to such a young user base that adults would not enjoy playing them the way they would enjoy playing Angry Birds or Candy Crush Saga. There are consistent themes among the mobile apps that children’s app publishers produce and many have been designed to appeal to young girls instead of young boys. Each of the children’s publishers in the July rankings published at least one, and often more than one, of each of the following types of games:

 

 

Estonia-based MobiPlay rose seventeen spots to earn the #9 publisher ranking by the iOS App Store monthly downloads in July. Driving their success was their popular 3D puzzle game, Can You Escape. This game forces users to search a 3D room for clues that will help them solve a puzzle and unlock the next room. Also contributing to MobiPlay’s top ranking was Escape If You Can, another app with a similar style of gameplay.

Rovio earned their #6 ranking on the back of their Angry Birds Star Wars games in July. The iPhone and iPad versions of the game, normally $0.99 and $2.99, were both made available for free from July 11th to 19th. During this time, Rovio announced an expansion of their franchise with a sequel to Angry Birds Star Wars that is scheduled to hit app stores on September 19th.

 

Rovio’s Angry Birds Star Wars game rose in the download rankings while it was available for free

 

 

On the back of the success of their Despicable Me app, Gameloft rose one spot in the ranking to become the top publisher by monthly downloads for both the iOS App Store and Google Play in July. Children’s game publisher Tiny Piece proved that their ranking in June wasn’t a flash in the pan when they earned the #2 spot in July because of their popular Crazy Dentist, Hair Salon, and Monster Doctor games. The continued success of Candy Crush Saga and emergence of Pet Rescue Saga helped King climb a spot in the rankings to become the 3rd most downloaded game publisher on Google Play in July.

Like Gameloft, Disney capitalized on the summer movie season and was boosted by the performance of their endless running game for Monsters University, which App Annie profiled in the June Games Index. Another contributor to Disney’s publisher ranking on Google Play was Where’s My Water?. This physics-based puzzle game has been rising steadily in the rankings since late May:

The free version of Disney’s Where’s My Water? has been steadily climbing the ranks since late May

 

Rovio, the #4 most downloaded game publisher on Google Play in July, unveiled their new worldwide accounts that will let players save their stats and games across devices. The worldwide accounts were only available for Angry Birds and The Croods during their initial release, but Rovio has been working on quickly expanding this feature to their other games.

Doodle Mobile, a member of former Google China President Kai-Fu Lee’s Innovation Works incubator, made the biggest leap in rankings to join the most downloaded publishers on Google Play in July when it climbed 255 spots to land at #10. The popularity of Fast Racing 3D fueled their movement up the charts as the China-based publisher found traction in many countries around the world.

 

 

Supercell held on as the top ranked publisher by iOS App Store monthly revenue for the sixth consecutive month. Beyond their success in the actual app stores, Supercell was recognized by their peers when they won two Developer Awards for Best IP for Clash of Clans and Best Independent Studio at the 2013 Develop Industry Excellence Awards.

The revenue generated by Candy Crush Saga allowed King to hold on to their position as the #2 revenue generating game publisher in the iOS App Store for the second straight month. Holding steady in the #3 position, GungHo Online continued to bring in much of its revenue from Puzzle & Dragons in Japan.

Gameloft revealed some details on the success they have achieved in a financial statement, which stated that their consolidated sales for the first half of 2013 increased 15% year-over-year. Gameloft’s first-half sales on smartphones and tablets grew by 45% year-over-year and represented 61% of the total group sales, compared to 48% in the first half of 2012. Digging deeper, it became clear that some of their rapid growth was also driven by the success of their virtual goods and advertising, which accounted for 80% of the company’s smartphone revenue. Another factor impacting their growth was their growing presence in China. Gameloft made a move to solidify that growth when they announced a continuation of their partnership with CocoaChina to localize their games for the Chinese market. CocoaChina will help Gameloft with app store placement, game design updates, carrier billing, and privacy protection for the launch of Asphalt 8: Airborne and Dungeon Hunter 4 in China.

Japanese app publisher GREE ranked #5, bolstered by the revenue generated by their massively multiplayer online role-playing combat game, Modern War. Kabam earned the #6 position based on the performance of their popular strategy role-playing games The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-Earth and Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North, and also their movie-based racing game Fast & Furious 6: The Game. Mobile card battle game MARVEL War of Heroes helped lead DeNA to the #9 position.

 

 

CJ E&M continued to lead publishers based in South Korea and earned the #3 publisher ranking for Google Play revenue in July. Speaking with App Annie on the approach that has consistently earned them a position in the Top Publishers by Monthly Game Revenue for Google Play this year, CJ E&M explained, "Whether it's the first authentic baseball game launched on Kakao, Everybody's Marble, the family focused real-time games or our hot RPG games for casual users, we are focused on creating an experience that can be enjoyed by every Kakao user. Coming in at #3 in App Annie's top publishers by monthly gaming revenues on Google Play for July is exciting, and a testament to our strategy for delivering high quality games that connect with our users. You can literally see Koreans enjoying our games everywhere."

GungHo Online maintained their #1 publisher ranking for Google Play game revenue, a spot they have held since the beginning of the year. Publishers based in Japan and South Korea dominated the rankings again, but United States-based Electronic Arts climbed back into the Top 10 on the back of strong revenue generation from The Simpsons^TM: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3. The financial results EA published on July 23rd revealed that their mobile and handheld digital net revenue for the quarter increased 30% year-over-year.

LINE climbed one spot to become the second strongest revenue generating Google Play publisher in July. LINE’s revenue ranking was primarily driven by their three games ranked in the Top 10 grossing Google Play games: LINE WIND runner, LINE Pokopang, and LINE POP; LINE Pokopang in particular quickly climbed the top grossing ranks from June to July. The Japanese market continued to be the primary source of revenue for LINE, but Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia also contributed to their success. LINE’s Q2 financial figures showed investors that their game revenue increased 53% from Q1 to Q2 in 2013.

GREE recently set aside $10 million for equity investments into their partner program. The Japanese mobile messaging and gaming app publisher began to see results from taking a more active role in their partnerships with other developers like IUGO and MunkyFun. With GREE’s help, IUGO was able to surpass $1 million in monthly revenue for their game Knights & Dragons. The Knights & Dragons revenue, along with strong performances from Jackpot Slots, Modern War, and Crime City helped GREE maintain their #5 ranking.

 

 

Despicable Me: Minion Rush and Candy Crush Saga held onto the top two spots in the iOS App Store game download rankings for July. Despicable Me: Minion Rush also was featured on the iTunes homepage in over 100 countries for the entire month of July and in over 140 countries from July 19th to 24th.

Further down in these rankings, there was significant turnover from June to July, with seven games moving up into the Top 10. King’s match-three puzzle game, Pet Rescue Saga, moved up to #3 in the rankings, following launches on their website and Facebook. Following its wide release in mid-June, Pet Rescue Saga was featured on the iTunes homepage in over 80 countries in July; the game quickly rose in the ranks to give King their second title in the top three games by monthly downloads for the iOS App Store.

The #4 most downloaded game in the iOS App Store for July, Can You Escape, challenges users to find hidden objects in an interactive 3D room to unlock a door that leads them to the next level. The game’s publisher, MobiPlay, is based in Estonia and has released other apps with a similar style of gameplay.

FDG’s endless running game, Banana Kong, rose 975 spots to #6. On July 18th, it received a major update that added a new underwater area, updated jungle and cave areas, new characters, utilities, and customization capabilities to the game. On July 23rd, the price was dropped from $0.99 to free.

 

Banana Kong’s download ranking improved significantly after an app update and price drop

 

Apple celebrated the 5th anniversary of the iOS App Store in July by offering some popular paid games for free for a week, including Frogm
ind’s side-scrolling action adventure game, BADLAND. This game also received the 2013 Apple Design Award at WWDC in June. Normally $3.99, BADLAND gained enough traction during the free promotion to make it into the Top 10 most downloaded games in the iOS App Store for July. Earlier in July, the app also was updated to include ten new levels to single-player, thirty new mission levels, and five new achievements.

 

BADLAND was made available for free during Apple’s 5th anniversary promotion

 

Hortor’s 疯狂猜歌 (Song Quiz Madness), an auditory identification game, also leaped into the Top 10 this month. Hortor previously had success in June with the popularity of 疯狂猜图 (Picture Quiz Madness), which challenged users to identify objects based on incomplete pictures.

July was the fourth month in a row that saw a movie-based game debut in the Top 10 iOS games by monthly downloads. Turbo Racing League, by New Zealand-based publisher PikPok, climbed 25 spots in July to land at #9. This racing game was based on Turbo, the animated DreamWorks movie about an underdog snail who miraculously gains the power of super-speed. The game was featured on the iTunes homepage in over 30 countries the weekend following the film’s July 17th release.

Electronic Arts’ Real Racing 3 was back in the Top 10 after a two month hiatus, racing up eleven spots to the #5. Its latest update, released on July 2nd, added Bentley and Mercedes-Benz models to their car lineup, included a new Time Trial mode, and added over 180 events. Real Racing 3 was also featured on the iTunes homepage in over 70 countries during July.

 

 

Gameloft’s Despicable Me app for Google Play joined its iOS App Store counterpart at the top of the monthly game download rankings in July. The endless running game was featured on Google Play’s home page in over ten countries on July 3rd, the day the movie opened in theaters. Since setting the opening five day record for an animated film by grossing $142 million in North America, Despicable Me 2 took less than a month to surpass its predecessor’s North American box office gross. As of August 25th, it was the 2nd highest grossing movie of the year worldwide behind Iron Man 3.

 

Gameloft’s endless running app for Despicable Me 2 topped the download rankings for both the iOS App Store and Google Play in July

 

Pet Rescue Saga rose twenty-four spots to reach #7 in Google Play’s monthly download rankings. With Candy Crush Saga at #2, King was the only publisher with more than one game in the Top 10. Since its release in mid-June, Pet Rescue Saga has performed well across a number of countries.

Doodle Mobile’s racing simulation game, Fast Racing 3D, quickly hit the fast lane after its release in late June. Popular across many countries, it sped to the #3 position in July’s ranking for monthly downloads on Google Play.

 

 

Candy Crush Saga reclaimed its position at the top of the iOS App Store revenue ranking for July.

After breaking into the rankings at #9 last month, Nordeus’ soccer club management game Top Eleven continued its popularity in Europe and rose two spots to #7. If Top Eleven continues to engage its user base and expand its growth internationally, it could be well positioned to capitalize on the popularity of the 2014 World Cup tournament next summer.

After a one month hiatus from the top grossing iOS App Store games rankings, Kabam’s strategy role-playing game Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North was back in the Top 10. The game began the month with the Red, White & Troops Festival from July 4th to 8th, ended the month with the Avalon Games Tournament from July 28th to 30th, and also ran a number of smaller tournaments and training events throughout the month:

 

Kabam’s steady stream of events in July coincided with rises in their United States iPhone revenue rankings

 

With Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North rising back into the Top 10, Kabam joined Supercell as the two publishers with multiple games in the Top 10 by monthly revenue for the iOS App Store in July. When Kabam released a commercial in late June for The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-Earth, they continued a recent trend that has seen mobile app publishers launch TV commercials to directly promote their apps. While apps have been featured in TV commercials for a couple years, AdAge reported that King’s Candy Crush Saga commercial became the first TV commercial dedicated to promoting a mobile app in the United States this past May. Tencent also made a splash in several markets this summer with their TV commercials featuring soccer star Lionel Messi promoting WeChat.

 

 

GungHo Online’s Puzzle & Dragons remained a model of consistency and has now been the top grossing Google Play game for every month of 2013. Meanwhile, every other spot in the Top 10 grossing Google Play apps changed in July. The impressive growth of 모두의마블 (Everybody’s Marble) for Kakao in South Korea drove the Monopoly-style board game up four spots to the #2 ranking. Kabam’s strategy role-playing game The Hobbit: Kingdoms joined Puzzle & Dragons and Candy Crush Saga to become the third game included in the Top 10 grossing apps for both the iOS App Store and Google Play.

Even with the addition of The Hobbit: Kingdoms from United States-based Kabam, the Top 10 grossing Google Play games in July continued to be dominated by publishers based in Japan and South Korea. Japan-based LINE was the only publisher to have more than one title in the Top 10 grossing Google Play apps, with endless running game LINE WIND runner at #4 and match-three puzzle games LINE Pokopang and LINE Pop at #5 and #7, respectively. Since its release in late May, LINE Pokopang has quickly climbed the ranks:

 

LINE Pokopang has seen impressive Google Play revenue growth

 

Baseball season is in full swing, and the game’s international popularity was evident in both App Annie Index reports for July. MLB.com At Bat was the #8 grossing app for the iOS App Store in July's Apps Index; COLOPL’s プロ野球 (Professional Baseball) PRIDE, a professional baseball card collection game, rose four spots to become the #9 grossing game in Google Play for July. プロ野球 (Professional Baseball) PRIDE was also featured in App Annie’s Games Index for Japan report as one of the top three grossing games in Japan in both the iOS App Store and Google Play for the month of May. The App Annie Games Index for South Korea also identified two official Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) games, 마구마구2013 (Magu Magu 2013) for Kakao and 이사만루2013 (Two down, bases filled 2013) KBO, in the May rankings for the top grossing Google Play games in South Korea.

 

Baseball’s international appeal is emerging and could continue to grow as the United States, Japan, and South Korea enter the final stretch before the postseason

For those of you who also are looking for an update on top apps other than games, please check out the July 2013 Apps Index.

 

Notes:

• The publisher and app rankings reported in the App Annie Index are based on the download and revenue estimates available through App Annie Intelligence. Daily rank history charts and home page feature app data that is available to all users through App Annie’s app tracker solution, Store Stats.
• While the Games Index covers games, the Apps Index provides app tracking on everything but games. Note that the Top Publishers rankings in the Games Index are based solely on the publishers’ games downloads and revenue, while the Top Publishers rankings in the Apps Index are based on the publishers’ non-games downloads and revenue.
• In the iOS App Store, an app can be categorized under a Primary Category as well as an optional Secondary Category. If an app has a Primary Category of Games and a Secondary Category of Entertainment, it is a candidate to be included in this Games Index. If the app’s Primary Category is Entertainment and its Secondary Category is Games, then it will not be included in this Games Index; it is a candidate for the Apps Index.
• Note that the ranking approach used in the App Annie Index differs from that used in the iOS App Store. In the latter, app rankings for a given category will include all apps whose Primary Category or Secondary Category matches that given category. So an app can appear in the rankings for more than one category within the iOS App Store or in App Annie Store Stats rankings.
• In Google Play, an app can be categorized under only one category, so there is no double-categorization.
• Occasionally, a publisher may decide to shift an existing app from one category to another category. In these cases, the App Annie Index will rank that app based on its categorization in the subsequent month. Given that the App Annie Index now has a Games report and an Apps report, the only scenario where an app’s recategorization could shift it from one Index to another is if its category changes from Games to a category other than Games or vice versa.
• In the App Annie Index, all apps and publishers are reported under their parent publishers, where available; for example, the MARVEL War of Heroes game is reported under its parent publisher DeNA, rather than its direct publisher Mobage. Note that if you view the DeNA publisher page on Store Stats, you will see the apps that are published directly by the DeNa publisher account. The MARVEL War of Heroes game will be listed separately under the Mobage publisher page.
• Apps with different names are ranked separately. For example, Angry Birds and Angry Birds HD are ranked as two separate apps.
• App Annie Index revenue rankings are based on revenue that the iOS App Store and Google Play earned from paid downloads and in-app purchases. They do not include revenue earned from in-app advertising.
• Any non-App Annie trademarks or images used in this report are the property of their respective owners. App Annie claims no rights in those trademarks.