Mobile gaming revenue is up despite shifts in market trends | Sensor Tower

Sensor Tower recently released its latest report on the state of mobile gaming at the beginning of 2025, which shows the trends that are poised to guide the market this year and how it’s changed over 2024. The findings of the report show that mobile gaming had positive year-over-year growth in in-app purchase (IAP) revenue for the first time since 2021. However, it also shows that downloads are down 6%, indicating perhaps that gamers are spending more time consistently in existing mobile game ecosystems, a change from previous market dynamics.

The report covers the various genres of games that saw success in 2024 and also covers the shifts in the emerging markets. The latter, it says, are responsible for some of the biggest increases in engagement in the market. Another major takeaway shows that fewer new games are succeeding on the market and gamers seem to overwhelmingly preferring core titles. There were over 200 new games in the top 1,000 in the U.S. in 2020, but only about 100 in 2024.