Sensor Tower: Analysis of Pinball/Brick Breaker Subgenres
An interesting look at uncovered subgenres. Them doesn't seem to grow, though - maybe that's why they have little attention?
Overall Figures
From January 2012 to the end of November 2023, games of these subgenres were downloaded 948 million times.
62% of all downloads were hyper-casual projects (monetization only through ads); 28% were hybrid-casual projects; and 10% were casual.
❗️There is at least one mid-core game - World Flipper. More about it below.
During the same period, Pinball/Brick Breaker subgenres games earned $296 million.
63% of revenue comes from hybrid-casual games; 24% from mid-core; 8% from hyper-casual; 5% from casual.
World Flipper by CyberAgent is the highest-earning game. It's a pinball game with RPG elements and gacha. The game has $71 million in lifetime revenue. PunBall by Habby has $39 million and ranks fourth.
❗️Sensor Tower does not specify whether ad revenue is included. Judging by the overall revenue volume and the share of hyper-casual projects in revenue structure - it seems not.
State of Genres by Revenue and Downloads
Snake VS Block - a game that reached peaks in downloads. In October 2017, it was downloaded almost 17 million times.
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Bricks n Balls - another interesting project. The game hit its record in September 2018 (6.5 million installs), but in April 2023, it surged again (+2000% in downloads).
Neither World Flipper nor Punball managed to stabilize revenue at any level. After each revenue spike, there is a sharp decline. There seems to be an issue either with user monetization or long-term retention of payers.
Retention and UA for the main hybrid-casual representatives of the subgenres
It can't be said that games of the genre have bad Retention figures. For example, D1 Retention for genre leaders ranges from 38% to 54%. And D60 for Bricks Breaker Quest reaches up to 10%. This is a clear leader; for other projects, this indicator is around 5%.
Bricks Breaker Quest relies on organic traffic (86.5%). Meanwhile, the share of paid traffic for Bricks Ball Crusher is 74.4%; for Bricks n Balls - 66.2%.