Apex Legends Mobile’s global release has been a success with EA making a lot of money from its latest game.
Apex Legends Mobile was released globally on May 17, 2022, and in its first week, has already earned $4.8 million in revenue, according to data analytics firm Sensor Tower. The anticipated game was released with its own battle pass, store, and some beautiful skins, with players putting in a lot of money on the new game to deck up their inventory.
Most of the downloads (and money!) came from the U.S.
With Electronic Arts announcing fancy pre-registration awards, which included skins, banners, and a badge, around 15 million people pre-registered for the game. As a result, Apex Legends Mobile was the most downloaded game in 60 countries around the world on the day of its global release, per Sensor Tower. Surprisingly, the highest number of these installs came from the U.S. This clashes with the idea that the U.S. isn’t considered a mobile-first market, followed by India and Brazil.
With the huge numbers of downloads, Americans also spent the most money on the game. Of the $4.8 million, a whopping $2.1 million (about 44 percent) came from the U.S. alone. Japan and Thailand ranked second and third in terms of Apex Legends Mobile’s overall revenue.
These numbers persuaded TSM to even sign an Apex Legends Mobile player as it announced on May 23 that popular YouTuber and professional player Sonho is joining the organization. Sonho has over 77,000 subscribers on YouTube.
How does Apex Legends Mobile’s revenue compare to other games?
Apex Legends Mobile’s first-week revenue of $4.8 million may sound like a lot, but it’s just a quarter of the $14.8 million Call of Duty: Mobile brought in in its first week following its release on Oct. 1, 2019.
Both games overshadow PUBG Mobile, though, which could only manage $600,000 in its first week back in 2018.
In terms of overall revenue, however, PUBG Mobile is far ahead of its peers. The game has made over $8 billion in its four years of release. A huge percentage of this has come from the game’s localized Chinese version called Game for Peace. With CoD: Mobile standing at $1.5 billion in lifetime revenue and Apex Mobile just starting out, both games have a long way to go if they want to chase down Tencent’s PUBG Mobile.
The main version of Apex Legends on PC and console has made over $2 billion since its 2019 release. The launch of Apex Legends Mobile has been immensely successful and if the game keeps this up, could surpass the main version in the future.
Apex Legends Mobile still faces a tough road ahead. Activision had announced earlier this year that it’s making a mobile version of CoD: Warzone. There are a lot of other mobile ports of popular shooter games on their way. Among them, VALORANT Mobile and Battlefield Mobile.
It’s not surprising to see companies focus more on mobile. PUBG Mobile’s $8 billion in revenue, shows the cash-making potential the market holds.