On the heels of Chinese tech giant Tencent announcing that its PUBG Mobile game has surpassed 1 billion accumulated downloads, also comes the report from leading data analytics firm, Sensor Tower, that it has earned $5.1 billion in lifetime sales.
The latest download figures would make it only the third mobile game to cross the one billion download mark after Subway Surfers (Kiloo Games) and Candy Crush Saga (King Digital Entertainment). However, compared to these two games which are relatively easy to play and appeal to a broad audience, PUBG Mobile is a battle royale game.
PUBG Mobile, in which a group of players fight each other until only a single combatant is left alive, has been hugely popular since it was launched three years ago.
Earlier this week, Tencent reported its online games revenue rose 29% in the fourth quarter, driven by a surge in paying users in China and international markets. Its two most popular games, Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile, continued to top the rankings in China and internationally, respectively, in the same quarter.Tencent earned $2.7 billion from gaming in 2020 alone.
All of gaming sector saw a boost during the pandemic, and that was especially true for multiplayer and social titles like PUBG. In China, PUBG Mobile is known as Game For Peace and is the most popular of all games. It has earned $2.8 billion, or 55.4% of the $5.1 billion total. The US is the next biggest market with 12.7% and Japan is third with 4.8%. PUBG Mobile is extremely popular in the UAE as well.
Combined with Chinese Game For Peace, the game accumulated an average of approximately $704 million in player spending per quarter between Q1 and Q3 2020. The title generated lower but equally impressive $555 million in Q4, while Q1 2021 looks to be its most lucrative quarter yet, with player spending already hitting $709 million. Overall, in 2020, PUBG Mobile generated an average of $7.4 million in spending per day.
In its report, Sensor Tower said: “PUBG Mobile’s success as the world’s top mobile battle royale title can in large part be put down to not just utilising its blockbuster PC game IP, but for extending beyond those boundaries to become its own game entirely built for a mobile audience.”
