Brawl Stars has become the latest Supercell title to push past $2bn, an impressive feat and one that places it in the double-unicorn club.
While any other company would kill for such a hit, incredibly it’s the FOURTH of Supercell’s games to hit the same massive milestone. So what’s the landscape like for Supercell’s line-up of hits? What’s still making this superstar the big bucks and what’s falling out of favour?
Brawling for the top spot
So what’s making Brawl Stars a hit? Well, you’d have to ask a critic about that. But we can dig into the actual financial performance of the title and judge for ourselves where Brawl Stars is in Supercell’s own rankings and whether it’s anywhere close to dethroning top titles such as Clash of Clans or Hay Day in the portfolio.
Supercell is (in)famous for ruthlessly axing underperforming titles, and that’s built them a relatively small but strongly performing stable of titles with Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Hay Day and Brawl stars all surpasses $1m monthly revenue across iOS and Android.
While Brawl Stars has pushed ahead to cross the $2bn milestone, it certainly hasn’t yet outdone predecessor Clash of Clans in terms of revenue. According to Sensor Tower data, on Android Clash of Clans makes around $11m revenue per-month, with $19m on iOS. That’s a total of $30m per-month. Meanwhile Brawl Stars is only bringing in $3m per-month on Android, and $4m on Android for a total of $7m in monthly revenue.
Seems like there’s plenty of cash still left in the Clan despite Clash of Clans having more than half-a-decade on its successor. And broadly speaking, despite the age gap, Brawl Stars is at the same level in terms of monthly downloads, with 2m on Android and 900k on iOS, compared to 2m and 1m for Clash of Clans.
Although Brawl Stars lags behind titles like Hay Day ($9m monthly revenue and 1.5m monthly downloads), it still ranks above Boom Beach, which proves to be Supercell’s current worst performer in their top five on both iOS and Android.
It it ain’t broke, don’t release a sequel…
So what’s next for the game that’s just passed the $2bn milestone? Well, if anything it’s demonstrative of Supercell’s philosophy towards new games. Brawl Stars performance is steady rather than meteorically rising and short of a radical reinvention or update, Supercell seems content for it to stay that way.
So what’s next for Supercell? The company is doing stunningly well, and their success – comfortably leaning back of a squad of bankers rolling in the millions each month – is a reflection that even in difficult times the mobile market can remain a source of lucrative, high-performing titles for developers and publishers that play the game right.
From humble beginnings, Supercell has pushed itself to the top of the game, slugging it out with studios backed by much bigger companies, or gaming giants that simply can’t get with mobile’s state of play.
But with Flood Rush having been the last game to get the axe, all eyes are now on its contemporary, Squad Busters. It’s an ambitious attempt to spring brand recognition of Supercell characters into its own game… Which sounds great but as the lowest performing title of all of Supercells still ‘active’ titles on Android it’s unicorn club status seems some way off.
Time will tell what Supercell’s next bold move will be.
