Supercell "printing money" with Clash games - SuperData

Both Clash of Clans and Clash Royale are generating $100m a month as digital sales in April climbed 5% to $6.2 billion

News by James Brightman Contributor

Published on May 27, 2016

While Mobile Strike was the top revenue generating title in April, SuperData's latest report shows that Supercell was the dominant mobile player for the month, as both Clash of Clans and new spinoff Clash Royale generated $100 million each.

"Supercell keeps printing money with both its Clash games earning over $100 million a month. Following a spectacular release month, earnings for Clash Royale show first signs of normalization as revenues more closely resemble those for the firm's other title Clash of Clans. Both grossed a little over $100 million last month, with combined earnings still higher than before the new game's release," noted SuperData analyst Joost van Dreunen.

While EEDAR's Patrick Walker previously speculated that Supercell may be in danger of cannibalizing its own Clash franchise by being too successful with Clash Royale, SuperData doesn't see it that way. "So far Supercell's new title has managed to add to the company's bottom line rather than cannibalize the success of its existing titles. In the past few months, Clash of Clans did experience a decline in revenues from over $5 million a day to just under $4 million, suggesting that the release of its new title was well-timed. Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal reported that Tencent is considering a possible acquisition of Supercell," van Dreunen continued.

Looking at other digital platforms, interestingly SuperData found that Bandai Namco's Dark Souls III was the first Dark Souls title to perform better on PC than console, "demonstrating that both Bandai Namco and From Software put the lessons learned from Dark Souls I and II to good use. This time around, a PC-optimized version was prepared in advance for the game's dual-platform release, providing PC users with improved controls and graphics from the get-go. The title's PC success makes up for its failure to earn a top-ten grossing rank on Digital Console." Overall, Dark Souls III earned an estimated $45 million in the first month of its release, outperforming console revenue by nearly $18 million and cracking the top five digital PC games.

For the entire digital games ecosystem, sales were up five percent year-over-year to $6.2 billion in April. Much of the growth came from digital sales on consoles, as digital console saw the fastest growth of any segment - up 23 percent in revenue and up 15 percent in audience. On the casual games side, players unsurprisingly have been shifting from social desktop to mobile devices, leading to a 10 percent decline for the category.

Here are the top selling digital titles by category for April 2016:

Digital console