Sensor Tower has revealed the top grossing mobile titles of August showing that Diablo Immortal is still experiencing strong growth, entering the charts for the first time in terms of overall revenue with over $97 million earned throughout the month, a 42 percent month-on-month rise*.*
Diablo Immortal may not have been the top performer of the month, but the game’s continued popularity has seen it earn over $200 million since its release. Last month, we listed the game’s developer Activision Blizzard and publisher NetEase as two of the top 50 biggest mobile game developers of 2022 here at Pocketgamer.biz.
The population of players on two different servers I used yesterday was way down.
World chat barely moved.
People do show up for Blessings though, but a much smaller number at that.
Well, it “only” needs to keep up the current monthly revenue for like 4+ years to catch up to Diablo 3 Probably more, since Blizzard presumably have to pay a higher cut of the revenue to third parties for D:I than for D3 (aka. Apple and Google).
(yes, this ignores the cost of making and running the games, D3 was presumably a lot more expensive to make. But supporting D:I with new content, and running MMO-style servers, presumably might be more expensive than running D3, so not sure how the cost aspect sums up in the end)
Most of the game’s global player spending came from Chinese users with the figure at 61 percent, eclipsing the United States which was the second largest market for the game with 16 percent of spending coming from there.
To be fair, China is what, 1½ month delayed compared to western release? So a reduction in playerbase might also hit China with the same delay.
but the game’s continued popularity has seen it earn over $200 million since its release.
This is not a bad number. I’ll give it to you. Thinking game downloaded for 20-25million that’s means the average money spent per player is growing at a steady pace which is great. I still no interest playing it though. Maybe after a few years I give it a try. Too busy at work.
A couple of things to unpack here for D:I sales figures on mobile devices.
61% of August sales were from China where D:I was released on July 25. That means only ~$38 million was from the rest of the world. This is a dropoff from earlier numbers for the non-Chinese regions. I expect this decline to continue. For perspective D:I in its first month made $49 million even though the game was not released in China and multiple countries in Southeat Asia region.
For China in particular, I wonder where the sales figures will be in a few months after the novelty has worn off. In the US peak sales occurred ~10 days post launch and then declined overall (with transient sale bounces associated with the release of new battle passes).
For the initial release regions, peak daily sales were 2.4 million dollars (~10 days after launch and no day in the first month post release was under a million dollars). Now for the all non-Chinese regions, the average daily sales for August are about 1.27 million.
In the US, D:I made $21 and $15 million respectively in its first month and in August.
Altogether, D3 sales on tbe first day are similar to total D:I sales to date even though D3 was not released in China until much later.
Trust me. I’ve played my fair share of this turd on release and I can say you’re not missing anything. It’s a reskinned mobile arpg with D3 assets combined with the worst monetization model and practices in the industry.
30% to google/apple.
X% to NetEase. Afaik nobody outside those two companies know how much the cut is. But the two recently abandoned another game project because they couldn’t agree on the cut. So it likely is significant.
Y% to Koticks next yacht.
Nobody cares about the Asian market. Otherwise every game ever made would only be released in Asia. Nobody outside of Asia will be touching DI again when D4 launches. And if D3 isn’t dead already, it will be then.
Well, not exactly. D3 got most of its revenue in the first years.
It does seem likely the monthly revenue will drop over time.
Not guaranteed of course. Genshin Impact has seemingly been able to keep a very constant revenue for the last 2 years. Even without having a Battle Pass that could ensure a stable monthly revenue. But 2 years also isn’t 4, so they still got some way to go too.
Probably more, since Blizzard presumably have to pay a higher cut of the revenue to third parties for D:I than for D3 (aka. Apple and Google).
