(And China, but data is hard to come by there thanks to the proliferation of third-party app stores.)Īnd finally, we’ll combine scores to arrive at an overall list of top 50 games of 2023 so far.ĭata will be US-centric (sorry!) but perhaps we’ll be able to do other countries or regions later. Then we’ll look at Android, where the vast majority of app and game installs happen, especially in massive Android-centric countries like India. But even so, iOS still takes credit for more than half of all in-app mobile revenue … thanks largely to the geographies where Apple owns market share: typically richer countries in North America, Europe, and certain parts of Asia. After all, it only accounts for about 20% of global downloads: 8 billion in Q2 2022 to Android’s 27 billion, according to SensorTower data. It’s an even more extraordinary game, like Clash of Clans, Roblox, or Call of Duty, that is still at or near the top of the revenue charts years and years after its initial release. The reality is that it is only the very unusual, extraordinary game that gets released years ago - even a decade ago, Subway Surfers! - and is still big. That makes it fresh enough for newbies, and still interesting for veterans. In addition, it should also keep existing players engaged, interested, and having fun for at least months, and preferentially years. how much gameplay - and therefore revenue - it’s generatingĪ top game should still be relevant to new players: it should be adding new people, or else it’s just slowly dying.Perhaps the best way to determine the best games of 2023 so far is a combination of both: One of the ways to measure that is revenue: do players playing these mobile games love them enough to lay out cold hard cash? Are these games good enough to pull out your credit card? (Or, yes, allow Apple or Google to take another little chunk out of your bank account.) Sure, scale is interesting - how many installs a game achieved - but engagement and active players and actual usage is probably much more important. But are the most downloaded games the top ones?Įach of those mobile games has a lot of downloads, but number of installs alone can’t be enough to make the list of the top 50 mobile games of 2023. Note that these are the most-downloaded games right now, and that’s a list that can be pretty volatile as different games publishers invest more or less in new user acquisition. On iOS, the top 10 games so far, by downloads are: So far, according to SensorTower data, the top games of 2023 by downloads are pretty jammed with familiar names. Most downloaded mobile games so far in 2023 for the first time ever in terms of revenue - thanks to streaming media and subscriptions - the reality is that both globally and in both the U.S., games are both the vast majority of smartphone downloads and massively significant in terms of mobile revenue.Īll of which means: it’s time to share the top 50 games of 2023 so far in the U.S. While apps recently finally surpassed games in the U.S.

Globally we’ve collectively downloaded more than 255 billion mobile apps in 2022 and more than half of them were games. What are the top 50 mobile games of 2023 so far? I thought you’d never ask!

Fishdom review