• Game of Thrones: Legends hasn’t been a runaway hit so far
• Meanwhile Marvel Snap revenue surged by 300% on July 10th

Stay Informed

It’s been a busy summer for mobile games with plenty of updates and some major new releases, whether that’s new Candy Crush competitions or a brand-new battle in Westeros.

Now, GameRefinery have highlighted some of the latest mobile manoeuvres this July via its Mobile Game Market Review for the month, noting the performance of new launches such as HoYoverse’s Zenless Zone Zero and Zynga’s Game of Thrones: Legends, the latter leveraging the world-famous Game of Thrones IP.

And it makes for interesting reading.

Despite that high profile IP, plenty of coverage and a launch trailer featuring Jon Snow himself the game is only seeing a “modest amount of success” so far.

According to GameRefinery, the puzzle RPG barely scratched the top 200 on the US’s top grossing charts despite that IP connection and Zynga’s reputation in the mobile sphere. 

Legends’ middling success may reflect a lack of overlap between Game of Thrones fans and match-3 players, particularly when compared to the likes of Marvel Snap, finding harmony between superhero fans and card game enjoyers, and showcasing a mobile adaptation done right.

A second helping

Case in point, Second Dinner’s Marvel Snap’s found new success this July, partly fuelled by the release of the critically acclaimed Deadpool and Wolverine moviee, currently in theatres and bringing the latest wave of attention to a Marvel franchise.

The card game introduced a Deadpool-inspired battle pass to coincide with the movie, and on July 10th, the film’s release date, Marvel Snap revenue soared by 300%.

GameRefinery noted that the title reached 21st on the US’s top grossing charts on iOS, but that this actually followed “the same trajectory as previous battle pass updates”, indicating that Marvel Snap is onto a winning formula with or without the support of new films.

The game also introduced guilds last month, a feature more common to MMOs and 4X, but representative of the increasing hybridisation of genres.

Another bite

Elsewhere in mobile King’s Candy Crush introduced five new events this July – more than typically seen in a single month. These included collection events Don’t Feed the Troll and Top That, win streak event Jelly Streak, the competitive Factory Frenzy, and challenging Volcanic Park, boosting the game’s popularity for the month.

Last but not least, July also saw the release of Genshin Impact maker HoYoverse’s latest game, the action RPG Zenless Zone Zero. The game achieved more than 45 million pre-registrations and zoomed to the $50 million mark, but its earnings have been somewhat behind its predecessors Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail.

GameRefinery hypothesised that an overlap in audiences is responsible for the new launch’s weaker performance, albeit it a major success compared to most other games on the market.

“And while the game plays perfectly well on mobile, there is a sense that it shines best played using a controller on a PC or console. It might be that the vast majority of its audience is actually based elsewhere,” GameRefinery notes.

Across platforms, Zenless Zone Zero’s pre-registrations doubled Honkai: Star Rail’s and even beat Supercell’s Squad Busters.