Sensor Tower: Mobile Puzzle games earned $42B in 11 years
The evolution of mobile puzzle gaming: 11 years of success (and high CPIs).
During the same period, users downloaded 50 billion apps.
Subgenres
Sensor Tower has once again revised its classification of puzzle game genres, among which the Swap subgenre took first place in terms of downloads (over 8 billion) and revenue (over $25 billion). This subgenre mainly includes Match-3 games.
Among the fastest-growing puzzle subgenres is Real-Time. The most successful games in this subcategory are Tetris (11 million downloads; $231 thousand in revenue) and Traffic Jam Fever (10 million downloads; $212 thousand in revenue).
Hybrid Casual Puzzles
Sensor Tower notes that hybrid casual puzzles saw a revenue growth of 429.67% YoY in the first 5 months of 2023. The analytical platform includes games like Triple Match 3D, Match 3D, Brain Test: Tricky Puzzles, and others in this category.
Among the best representatives of hybrid casual games, D1 Retention ranges from 39% to 45%; D11 Retention is around 15% (Triple Match 3D has 20%); D41 Retention is around 5-10% (Triple Match 3D has 13%).
Revenue by Countries
In the United States and Europe, there is a diverse set of subgenres contributing to revenue. Despite the dominance of the Swap category, there is substantial revenue from Blast, Merge, Word, Hidden Object, and other subgenres.
In China, 83% of the revenue comes from the Swap subgenre, with Merge in second place at 9%.
In Japan, there are two clear leaders: the Swap subgenre (53%) and Chain (27%).
Great analysis