Sensor Tower recently released its latest Digital Market Index Report, which covers the mobile market for the last quarter of 2024. The general report is cautiously optimistic, showing that in-app revenue is up by 13.5% year-over-year, reaching a new high of nearly $40 billion. In the gaming-specific part of the report, Sensor Tower reports that strategy games comprised a large part of the breakout games chart.
Specifically, six out of the top 10 games on the Q4 breakout games chart (when sorted by in-app purchase revenue) were strategy games, including Whiteout Survival, Last War: Survival and Age of Empires Mobile. Pokémon TCG Pocket was also one of the biggest new hits of the quarter, having launched in October and almost immediately shooting to the top 10. It’s also the only game that was on both the top IAP revenue and top downloads lists for Q4.
Elsewhere in the report, strategy is noted to be the top gaming genre by IAP revenue in Q4, followed by RPG and puzzle games — in fact, strategy offset an overall decline (20% year-over-year) in RPG-focused spending in the quarter. However, in terms of downloads, the top three genres globally were puzzle, simulation and arcade, which accounted for over 7 billion downloads overall. Strategy downloads climbed by 26%, but it was still relatively low on the list overall.
Sensor Tower foreshadowed the success of the strategy gaming genre in its 2025 markets insight report, where it reported that strategy games dominated in terms of overall global consumer spend. Jonathan Briskman, Sensor Tower’s Principal Market Insights Manager, attributed this to the genre’s ability to offer ease of access for new users while also catering ad strategies that work on entrenched, long-term players. For a game like Pokémon TCG Pocket, the recognizable IP probably also helps when onboarding new users.
