Gacha games revenue August 2024: Hoyoverse in danger?
AFK Journey tops revenue charts, while Hoyoverse hits its lowest since the HSR launch. Check out more highlights in our August 2024 Gacha games revenue overview.
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Sensor Tower released the Gacha games revenue for August 2024. This month, AFK journey takes the number one spot due to a successful Chinese launch. Zenless Zone Zero performs much worse than on the release month. The new game Sword of Convallaria performs well in its first month. Learn about this more in our August 2024 Gacha Games revenue overview.
AFK Journey successfully peaks August Gacha Games revenue due to a successful Chinese version launch
Rarely do we see Gacha games released globally before releasing in China. AFK Journey is one of those rare games. Released in late March, this Fantasy RPG performed well in revenue and player base retention. However, the hype has significantly dropped since then. However, the release in China was able to spark new life into the game.
Last month, the game barely made $5 million. Now, however, the combined revenue is at almost $72 million. The Chinese release brought in $47 million alone. This again reminds everyone of the importance of the Chinese region and how much it can improve the game’s life.
To be fair to global players, they also contributed, as global revenue rose to $25 million, five times more than last month.
Hoyoverse Gacha games revenue drops to an almost 2-year low
Zenless Zone Zero performed poorly this month as the revenue dropped from almost $100 million to barely getting over $30 million. Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail both make only around $40 million. Combined, this makes $110 million for the company. This is a drastic change from what we saw in spring, where Hoyoverse made twice as much money with only two games. So, what did happen to ZZZ and other Hoyoverse games?
There is an explanation. Zenless Zone Zero performed well on launch. However, players quickly discovered that the game didn’t differ much from the other 2 Hoyoverse titles. This disappointment, combined with the fact that August only saw the release of Qingyi, affected the game’s revenue significantly.
Genshin Impact was in its 4.8 patch for most of the month. These patches always come right before the release of the new region, so players often decide to save. With the release of new characters, this should improve. We expect the game to reach peak numbers again during the 5.2 patch in late fall with the release of the highly anticipated Pyro Archon.
Honkai Star Rail is in the same dead patch situation. The Penacony storyline has ended, and most players await the release of the new main story. However, even for the next patch, there is good news, as the community seems excited about the new characters.
We expect the situation to improve for all the games in September. And it is reasonable to expect Hoyoverse’s revenue to sometimes hit low points like those.
Gacha Games Revenue: What is happening with Wuthering Waves?
The leading competitor with Hoyoverse’s Genshin Impact — Wuthering Waves, is also experiencing revenue downfall. Last month, the game made almost $30 million. This month is only $13,5 million. So what is the problem there, and can we expect improvement soon?
Well, Wuthering Waves is currently in a similar situation to Hoyoverse’s games. As the game’s release is already behind, we see a drop in interest in the game; this is combined with the release of a non-meta character, and this month’s revenue is quite low. The problem for Kuro games is that September is not looking good, either. The game will be giving out the next character for free. This is great for F2P players, but this will be at the expense of Kuro Games’ pocket.
However, after probably reaching the lowest point in September, we expect Wuthering Waves to pick up pace again, with the upcoming characters like Shorekeeper and Camellia coming soon, along with the story expansion.
Gacha games revenue: Sword of Convallaria performs well on launch
A new tactical turn-based RPG Sword of Convallaria earns $8 million dollars combined on its launch day. Of course, this is a small achievement compared to the big game in the industry, but we need to take the scale of the game into consideration. Sword of Convallaria is a turn-based RPG with graphics in pixel art style. The game is definitely made for mobile users.
Games like these repeatedly show that even a small project with an old concept can perform well. It will be interesting to see how the game performs in the future.
Conclusion
This is a tough month for some of the big titles in the industry. While a lot of smaller projects perform much better. There is nothing to worry about because the industry has already established itself and will grow even if some big games do badly for a month.
The current month also shows that if your favorite Gacha game is currently on its downside, you can try out some other games while waiting for new content.
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