What were the online games’ digital revenues worldwide in February 2019? For Apex Legends, it’s going fantastic, while Hearthstone is doing quite poorly. For Anthem, there are good and bad news. The sales numbers are good, but the cash shop is struggling.
What are the numbers? The numbers come from SuperData and indicate how the global digital revenues looked in February 2019.
This is about the money made through purchases in the respective game shops or through other platforms like the PS Store or the Microsoft Store. It does not include “retail sales,” meaning sales in stores.
However, it seems that these retail sales hardly matter anymore in 2019. Because Anthem looked really bad – the sales figures tell a much rosier picture for Anthem and other games when digital purchases are included.
Apex Legends did this well: It was the surprise hit in February 2019. It is known that at least 50 million players downloaded it.
The question was: Did they also spend money in the cash shop?
Yes, they did. Apex Legends ranks 6th in revenues on PC and 4th on the consoles PS4 and Xbox One. So while Apex Legends remains below Fortnite, it has established itself strongly.
Apex Legends had the “best launch month of a free-to-play game ever.” It earned 92 million USD across all platforms. Most of this came from consoles.
Fortnite Battle Royale launched much smaller in September 2017 – the hype really started in March 2018.
March should also be strong for Apex Legends – after all, the new battle pass has been released here. This will likely drive revenues up.
Hearthstone did this poorly: The card game from Blizzard makes the “largest loss” from 2018 to 2019 in February. It loses 52% of revenues on PC and mobile.
At Superdata, they believe that the competition is getting stronger and Hearthstone is simply getting weaker. People are probably tired of the franchise.
In a few weeks, Hearthstone has the chance to turn things around: The next expansion is supposed to come in April.
But why is Hearthstone struggling so much?
- It could be that nothing has happened in Hearthstone for too long.
- Or perhaps there are deeper issues. Even Blizzard is already asking former super fans what they need to do, to get them back to Hearthstone’s tavern.
- Or it could be due to the departure of frontman Ben Brode, as Cortyn suspects.
Here’s how Anthem did: There are good and bad news for Anthem:
- The good news is: With 100 million USD in revenue at launch, it now enters 3rd place on consoles.
- However, this is likely to drop sharply, as hardly anyone bought anything in the cash shop. Only 3.5 million USD were made. Therefore, the title will probably not be able to hold its position in the next top lists.
