Given the sheer scale of Tencent's mobile game operations - by revenue, it's the world's largest mobile games company - it's very difficult to know where to rank it, particularly as development is by far the smallest part of the business. It's been a strong supporter of Korean mobile messaging service Kakao something that Tencent hopes will prove equally lucrative when that expertise is combined with its similar WeChat service. The reason for such business maneuvering is that thanks to casual games like Everybody's Marble for Kakao, which has been a top 5 grossing game on Google Play in Korea since its July 2013 release, Netmarble Games is often listed among the top 10 top grossing mobile games companies in the world Tencent now owns 28 percent of the company with CJ E&M also retaining some stock. Then, in March 2014, a $500 million investment from Chinese giant Tencent enabled entrepreneur JoonHyuk Bang to become the largest shareholder in Netmarble, merging it with CJ Games. It is, however, in turn part of conglomerate CJ Group, which has activities ranging from logistics and home shopping to pharmaceutics, biotechnology, food and entertainment.
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It has business interests in music, TV, movie theatres and shopping malls as well as games. More generally, LINE now has over 170 million monthly active users and there are 13 countries in which it has more than 10 million users, making it a strong global platform for developers.Īs for LINE, the majority of its $720 million annual revenues are generated from casual arcade games such as LINE Cookie Run, LINE Pop, Disney Tsum Tsum and LINE Get Rich (a version of Netmarble's Everybody's Marble).īut it's also looking to extend its reach, branching out into midcore games and RPGs a process it kicked off with sister company NHNPlayArt's Revenant Gate.Ī prime example of the complex world of the Korean chaebol, CJ Games and Netmarble used to be subsidiaries of Korea's largest media company CJ E&M. It's also now looking to work directly with mobile developers in Taiwan and Thailand, both of which - like Japan - are countries in which LINE is the #1 messaging service.
The highest profile move in this respect has been Epic Voyage, a joint venture game development studio in Japan set up with GREE. Click here to view the list »Īlthough formally a mobile messaging platform, in recent months, the LINE Corporation has moved from being an active publisher of mobile gaming into being an active participant in mobile game development. Nevertheless, in this year's list, we're focused less on headline financials, and more of the quality of games something that in future will only become a more important part of exciting the mobile gamer.Īnd, after all, that should be the starting point for every game. As demonstrated in Japan and China, radical change is always possible.
That's not to say that new games and new entrants can't shake up the system, however. Instead, in future, developers will be competing for slices of a relatively fixed pie.Īnd much of that pie is already claimed by companies with annual sales of more than $1 billion. With mobile game revenues in 2014 estimated to be $25 billion, it's clear that the early days of high growth are over. Now in its sixth year, it's becoming harder to recall those days when the iPhone 3GS was the only serious gaming device available.Ĭlearly, there have been a lot of changes since then something the list reflects in both obvious and more subtle ways.įor example, our list is now truly global, demonstrating you can find world-beating mobile game developers everywhere from Helsinki, Tokyo, San Francisco, London, Seoul and Shanghai to less well known cities like Karlsruhe and Aarhus.Ī more subtle change is the maturing of the market. Welcome to 's Top 50 developer list for 2015, which is sponsored by mobile advertising platform Supersonic and developer, publisher and tools company Chukong Technologies.
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