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SuperData: Mobile games hit $40.6 billion in 2016, matching world box office numbers

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

Mobile games hit a new record by generating more than $40.6 billion in worldwide revenue in 2016, up 18 percent from a year ago, according to research by SuperData Research and Unity Technologies. That money is equal to all global movie box office sales during the same time, the companies said.

Mobile games now account for half of the entire global digital games market. The year’s big hits included new titles such as Pokémon Go and Super Mario Run. The report examines the combined mobile, mobile VR, and overall VR markets, and it’s the first to use data from both companies.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.