The 5 most downloaded smartphone games

Video games have proven to be more than just a hobby or distraction for young people, in recent years they have not only become a serious but competitive industry to the point of surpassing hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and organizing tournaments that pay higher figures than even major sporting events. One case that went viral recently was that of a 16-year-old who took the $ 3 million prize after winning the Fortnite World Cup. This figure exceeded what athletes like the champion of a Roland Garros or a Tour de France can receive, according to El Español.

But this does not stop there, since beyond being a very profitable industry, there is also internal competition in terms of the platform used to play, be it video consoles such as Sony's Play Station or Microsoft's Xbox. As for the market that each of these platforms has, perhaps for many the fact that games in their phone version are the main source of income in the industry is unexpected. This behavior may be due to the fact that approximately 3.2 billion people have a smartphone according to 2019 figures offered by Statista, therefore, more people can access the mobile phone application store and download a game for free without needing to make an extra investment in gaming consoles or computers.

Also read: 4 video games that are also works of art

According to Super Data, a market research company specialized in video games, in 2019 the video game industry generated revenues of more than 120,000 million dollars, which meant an increase of 4% compared to 2018. Of this total figure, the mobile device platform represents more than half of this revenue, since it produced earnings of $ 64.4 billion, while computers generated $ 29.6 billion and game consoles, $ 15.4 billion. It should be noted that 4 out of every 5 dollars gained came from free games.

The video games that made the most money

Super Data also teaches that among all video games, Fortnite was the one that made the most money with 1.8 billion dollars, this game developed by the company Epic Games is available for free on all the aforementioned platforms. In second place is Dungeon Fighter Online with 1.6 billion, this game is also free but only available on PC. Finally, there is Honor of Kings, a free smartphone-only game that has earned 1.6 billion, other better-known mobile games such as Candy Crush Saga and Pokemon Go are in the fifth and sixth place with 1,500 and 1,400 million respectively.

It may seem contradictory that free games are the ones that make the most money, how do they do it? For those who have ever spent time playing on smartphones, they will have noticed that despite being able to play for free without problems, there are always paid elements. The most common can be paying to have more lives or for a "premium" clothing, since that is where most of the income comes from, this type of modality is called "freemium" since although it can be played for free it always include Premium payments that in the end do not usually influence player performance, according to Merca20. Advertising in video games also provides an important income, in which brands seek to position themselves through their presence in games, a typical example is sports games.

Now, although there are games such as Fornite that must be downloaded directly from its website to be played on smartphones, most video games are available in the two major application stores: Android Google Play and iOs Apps Store. Menzig Tech points out which were the most downloaded games by these platforms in 2019, the first 5 are the following:

5) Color Bump 3D: This skill game that consists of protecting a ball from certain obstacles has just over 200 million downloads between the Apps Store and Google Play.

4) Fun Race 3D: This video game by the same developer as Color Bump 3D consists of a racing game where you must avoid obstacles, it has more than 200 million downloads.

3) Subway Surfers: In the style of Fun Race, this traditional game consists of choosing a character and running away from the police on some train tracks where you must dodge obstacles by collecting coins and powers, it had nearly 250 million downloads in 2019.

2) Garena Free Fire: The Battle Royale games category is booming after the Fortnite viralization, in this case, Free Fire is the second most downloaded game on both platforms during 2019 with nearly 300 million downloads that year alone.

1) Pubg Mobile: The most downloaded game also falls into the Battle Royale category with almost 300 million downloads in 2019.