Casual followers of the Nordic gaming ecosystem know that titles like Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga are making “a lot of money”, but other than “they’re up there” what does Nordic gaming’s presence in the App store actually look like?
We dug into a year’s worth of the top grossing iOS apps on AppAnnie, marking down what the positions were on Sunday, each week. This caused us to miss some apps, such as Angry Birds Star Wars II, which hit the #9 top grossing position only a Thursday, for example. While our chart skips over some flash hits, it should give a good idea of how persistent and steady the top grossing market is, and how well Nordic games are at clinging on to their top rankings in the U.S. app store.
Five apps from the Nordics made our list, including two from Stockholm-based King: Candy Crush Saga and Pet Rescue Saga; as well as two from Helsinki-based developer Supercell, with their two hit titles, Clash of Clans and Hay Day. Also jumping on and off the top 10 list was Minecraft: Pocket edition, created by Stockholm-based Mojang. Unlike Supercell and King’s free-to-play games featuring in-app purchases, Mojang is a premium game currently selling for $7.99.
After looking at this, I think there are a few takeaways.
King ≠ only Candy Crush Saga
After news of King’s planned IPO reached the tech scene, we saw some noise that King was just a one-hit wonder, and one gaming success out of King’s long history does not an IPO make. But seeing Pet Rescue Saga stay up on the top grossing charts, it seems King has some idea what they’re doing – or is at least good at pumping enough into marketing to make it appear that way for investors.
It’s a little boring how little these positions move
It seems once these powerhouses gain position and mass, they’re experts in locking on to users and not letting them leave their wallets behind. It’s really remarkable how solid these games have stayed on the charts for an entire year and not let new prodigies or even flash successes push them from the top grossing positions. These games are machines.
Clash of Clans broke into the top 10 most grossing apps August 31st of 2012. That’s almost one year and five months before now. In fact, all of these apps have been published over one year ago.
Top image by Distimo
