Mobile Games Turn Into Boom-or-Bust Industry as Spending Rises

(Bloomberg) — Mobile gamers ramped up their spending by 4% last year even as the number of downloads and new releases fell, highlighting the narrowing of the industry to a handful of huge titles that dominate users’ time.

New hits took less time than ever to reach their first $1 million in revenue — 106 days — but competition from evergreen titles meant there were fewer of those standouts than before, according to Appfigures data. Only 399 new games achieved that threshold, and there were 43% fewer games released overall in 2024, the researchers said.