A report released by Sensor Tower found that during the surge in mobile games in 2020, the revenue of users dedicated to simulation genre games increased by 61.8%, compared to 2019 figures.
Simulation games have been around for some time. Shining examples of the genre include The Sims, Fallout, and Stardew Valley. While these are definitely popular games in their own right, deserving of much praise, the genre has been well explored and marked by Minecraft, Roblox, and Animal Crossing. The latter himself has gained an endless surge of popularity due to both its cute gameplay and escape setting, coupled with the endless barrage of problems brought by 2020, the leader of the COVID-19 pandemic. among them. In fact, the angle of escape offered by simulation games may well explain why they have gained popularity in 2020. In a year of disease, wildfires, and racial tensions, people may want to. -to be simply imitating while passing through much simpler worlds, loaded with their own dangers and wonders of course, but much less complicated than the one in which we currently live.
Sensor Tower, a data collection and analysis company focused on the application market niche, used its own Store Intelligence tool to determine and differentiate the growth of each genre of mobile application game in the US market. from 2019 to 2020. Simulation games topped any competition with a solid 61.8% increase. With titles like Roblox and Township the top spenders among gamers, the Top 100 Games in the genre grossed a total of around $ 2 billion. The largest subgenre found in pretend games was sandboxes, which saw a year-end of 86.2%. Of the $ 936 million generated by sanbox titles, Roblox spent the bulk of the profit at $ 746.4 million.
After simulation applications in second place, there was casino games, a genre dependent on online gambling and the like. Since no real money is involved throughout the game process other than spending on in-game items, these apps were the only excess allowed to most people, with frugality being a theme. major of 2020 for most individuals. Casino titles oversaw a 48.9% growth at year-end, generating $ 4.5 billion in user spending revenue.
Interestingly, though, while simulation games have seen ridiculous growth in revenue, downloads show a slightly different picture. In another report from 2019 to 2020, the growth in app downloads was measured for each genre and presented. Casino titles took over from second place to establish a strong first position, with a 27.5% increase in year-to-year downloads at year-end. The simulation couldn’t even generate the second place, as the puzzle genre took over with a 19.5% growth in downloads, even though users held their wallets more in this instance. Simulation games took third place with just an 11.2% increase in downloads during our year-end period.
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