China’s Tencent, miHoYo remain on top of their industry with world’s most lucrative mobile games, despite sluggish market

Honour of Kings, PUBG Mobile and Genshin Impact ranked as the highest-grossing mobile games in the first half of this year, according to Sensor Tower

The global video gaming market, however, saw total consumer spending on mobile games in the same period fall 6.6 per cent year on year to US$41.2 billion

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Tencent Holdings’ PUBG Mobile, left, and miHoYo’s Genshin Impact ranked behind Honour of Kings as the world’s highest-grossing mobile games in the first half of this year. Photos: Shutterstock

Published: 10:30pm, 7 Jul 2022Updated: 2:54am, 8 Jul 2022

Tencent Holdings and miHoYo maintain their ranking atop the video gaming industry with the world’s most lucrative mobile games in the first half of this year, despite a sluggish global market, according to the latest data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

Honour of Kings and PUBG Mobile from internet giant Tencent, which runs the world’s largest video gaming business by revenue, remained the industry’s highest-grossing mobile titles in the first half, according to Sensor Tower. For the second consecutive year, Shanghai-based miHoYo’s Genshin Impact ranked third in the same period.

A multiplayer online battle arena game, Honour of Kings generated US$1.4 billion in consumer spending in the first six months of the year. PUBG Mobile, the battle royale title adapted from bestselling personal computer and console game PUBG: Battlegrounds, made US$1.1 billion in the same period.

An anime-style action role-playing game recognised for the biggest international launch of a Chinese game in history, Genshin Impact gained US$986.2 million in the first half.

Wu Zetian is a popular character in Tencent Holdings’ marquee mobile title Honour of Kings, which is the first video game in history – across all platforms – to average more than 100 million daily active users. Photo: Handout.

The Sensor Tower rankings covered data from Apple’s App Stores and Google Play stores worldwide, while excluding those from mainland China’s various Android app stores.

While consumer spending on Genshin Impact rose 16.3 per cent year on year, the numbers for Shenzhen-based Tencent’s Honour of Kings and PUBG Mobile both declined from the first half of 2021, when each title generated as much as US$1.5 billion.