Mobile Game Update Boosts Rankings... Top 2 to 4 Revenue Spots All Taken by Chinese Games

Chinese Game Genshin Impact Rises from 74th to 4th Place
New Year Update... Secures Loyal Users

Image of 'Genshin Impact' by Chinese game company HoYoverse. Provided by HoYoverse

The influence of Chinese games is growing stronger in the domestic mobile game market. Mobile games overwhelmingly dominate the overall game market, and Chinese games are actively targeting this sector through New Year updates and other strategies.

According to application analytics firm Mobile Index on the 10th, as of the 7th, the Google Play Store mobile game revenue rankings showed 'Last War: Survival,' 'WOS: Whiteout Survival,' and 'Genshin' occupying 2nd to 4th places respectively, marking top-tier positions. These games were developed by First Fun, Century Games, and Hoyoverse, all of which are Chinese game companies.

Expanding the revenue rankings to the top 10, 'Mingzhuo: Wuthering Wave' at 8th place is also a work developed by the Chinese game company Kuro Games. Kuro Games gained attention after being acquired by Tencent, a global Chinese game company, in December last year.

The recent rise of Chinese games in the top revenue ranks is largely due to New Year updates. This effect is especially prominent in subculture genres featuring Japanese anime-style characters, such as Genshin and Mingzhuo. These companies' revenue rankings were 29th and 74th respectively, but Genshin quickly rose after its version 5.3 update 'Hot Reincarnation' on the 1st of this month, followed by Mingzhuo's version 2.0 update 'Song Dedicated to Silence' earlier this month, which introduced new characters and rapidly boosted their rankings.

Chinese game companies are putting considerable effort into New Year updates because the domestic game market is heavily concentrated on mobile and serves as an important cash cow. According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, mobile accounted for 91.7% of the platforms most frequently used by domestic game users last year, the highest proportion. This is an overwhelming figure compared to PC (53.8%), console (26.7%), arcade (15.1%), and VR (virtual reality) (7.3%).

An industry insider said, "As user sophistication increases, it is very difficult to achieve high revenue rankings in the current market without solid gameplay," adding, "Chinese games have already deeply penetrated the domestic market with high-quality gameplay, advanced business models (BM), and even secured loyal fans."