Sensor Tower recently released its latest digital market index report covering the mobile market for the last quarter of 2024. The general report has been cautiously optimistic, with in-app revenues rising 13.5% year-on-year to nearly $400 billion. In the game-specific part of the report, Sensor Tower reports that strategy games were the majority of the breakout game chart.
Specifically, six of the top 10 games on the quarter breakout game chart (sorted by in-app purchase revenue) were strategy games such as Whiteout Survival, Last War: Survival, and Age of Empire Mobile. Pokémon TCG Pocket was also one of the biggest new hits of the quarter, launched in October and filmed almost immediately into the top 10. It is also the only game that was on both the top IAP revenue and the top download list for the fourth quarter.
Elsewhere in the report, the strategy is a top gaming genre with IAP revenue for the fourth quarter, with RPGs and puzzle games being allowed to continue. In fact, the strategy offsets the overall decline in quarterly RPG-centric spending (20% year-on-year). However, when it comes to downloading, the top three genres worldwide are puzzles, simulations, and arcade, accounting for over 7 billion downloads. Strategy downloads rose 26%, but they were still relatively low on the overall list.
Sensor Tower foresaw the success of the strategy game genre in its 2025 Markets Insight report. Jonathan Briskman, Sensor Tower’s leading market insights manager, attributes this to the genre’s ability to provide easy access to new users, and also cateres advertising strategies that address established long-term players. For games like Pokémon TCG Pocket, a recognizable IP is probably also useful when onboarding new users.
