PUBG kickstarted the battle royale phenomenon when it was initially released for the PC. Now it’s available on Xbox One, as well as Android and iOS devices. In the first quarter of 2018, PUBG Mobile has turned out to be the most downloaded game in the world. Despite that impressive feat, it didn’t manage to actually be the most profitable mobile game.
According to the most recent Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence Data Digest, PUBG Mobile has accrued over 60 million installs on Android and iOS devices worldwide in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Most of those downloads were from the App Store whereas the game didn’t even make it into the top twenty of the most downloaded games on Google Play. Subway Surfers grabbed the top spot for the latter.
Thanks to PUBG‘s amount of downloads, its developer Tencent is currently number one on the top mobile publishers by game downloads and game revenue. Another Tencent game, Honor of Kings, was overall the most profitable game in the first quarter of 2018. Ultimately, both games allowed the company to be the most profitable mobile publisher by revenue.
Where’s Fortnite in all this?
On a related note, we reported last month that Fortnite Mobile managed to make over a whopping $15 million in the span of merely a month. Impressively, the game managed to accomplish that feat with only the iOS version of the game available at the time. Surprisingly, the game didn’t manage to break into any of the top mobile game lists either by downloads or revenue.
In other related news, statistics from market intelligence firm Newzoo projected that approximately 2.3 billion gamers from around the world will be spending a whopping $137.9 billion on games in 2018. Mobile games are set to dominate half of the entire games industry in 2018, for the first time ever in the history of gaming. That means that console and PC games will only contribute about 25 and 24 percent of gaming revenue, respectively.
