As the calendar turned to June, the summer season officially began, and competition in the global mobile games market continued to heat up. Compared with May, when the new-game market weakened in both volume and revenue, the number of new titles making the charts in June contracted further, but revenue-side data began to recover. In particular, the overseas market once again produced clear leading products, with IP titles and Korean MMOs becoming the main revenue drivers. Overall, this month's market had active categories, topical discussions, and breakout individual titles, but it had not yet formed a broad-based rise across all genres.

First, looking back at two new titles released in the domestic market at the end of May: Heartbeat Trap, the oriental supernatural suspense romance mobile game launched by FriendTimes at the end of the month, continued its strong revenue-side start in its second month after launch. In particular, in mid-June, the official debut of the new male lead Wuzhiqi, together with updates to Chapters 14 and 15 of the main storyline, stimulated a second peak in IAP revenue. From the trend perspective, by the end of the month, its daily revenue trend had not shown a clear decline. Overall, its unpacking-based growth and numerical-loop mechanics, which differ from those of other otome games, may weaken the romance immersion and story emotions that users value; while they cannot create an explosive data surge in the short term, they provide more stable daily-retention support for the product, which is expected to maintain a relatively steady data trend going forward.

Another title, Chaos Zero Nightmare, a cosmic dark-fantasy Roguelite deckbuilding strategy game domestically published by Tencent, also continued the gameplay advantages that had already been validated by its overseas version after launching in China. After entering June, the first season, “Song Echoing in the Galaxy,” launched in mid-June, along with the limited main combatant Heidmarie rate-up event, 70 free draws for login, and extra limited gacha items for the one-month public-beta celebration. These activities once again lifted revenue data to a new daily peak. The product's strong performance also once again validated Tencent's mature capabilities in overseas anime-game agency operations, localized content packaging, and event pacing.

Returning to June's new-game data, this issue again features four new titles that met our chart's statistical standards. The overall number and data were almost unchanged from the previous month, but the performance of the leading single title was slightly weaker. As before, we will briefly analyze several products released domestically last month in order of their revenue data for the month.

First is Under the Nightfall, a new female-oriented title with a Sicilian Mafia theme launched by Tianti Network. With the Mafia, family revenge, power struggles, and “everyone is a villain” as its narrative foundation, the game has stronger communication distinctiveness than traditional sweet-romance, companionship, or light-romance routes. In its first month after launch, the title achieved more than 2.55 million downloads in the domestic market and generated more than $3.31 million in estimated revenue, topping June's domestic new-game data. Its early performance proves that there is still room for differentiated themes to break through in the female-oriented market.

The core gameplay of Under the Nightfall revolves around story progression, character development, side-scrolling strategy combat, collection matching, family management, and emotional interaction. The overall combat experience is relatively light. The combination of low-entry-barrier automatic basic attacks and manual finishing skills reduces the onboarding difficulty for broader female-oriented users, while the development system provides a certain degree of playability and retention space. The product's ability to generate revenue quickly in the early launch stage shows that its character and story selling points have completed the first round of conversion. Together with Heartbeat Trap, the two titles have also brought fresh topicality back to the female-oriented track after a relatively quiet period.

Second is Lineage 2: Covenant, a fantasy MMORPG developed by NCSOFT and operated domestically by Tencent. As another mobile adaptation of the classic PC-game IP, the title recreates and upgrades iconic content from the original, including the continent of Aden, classic classes, boss encounters, and clan siege warfare. In the early launch stage, the game quickly attracted veteran players back through the nostalgic appeal of its mature IP and achieved both downloads and estimated revenue above one million within just one week of launch.

In terms of gameplay, while recreating and retaining the classic PC-game experiences of open-world loot farming, dungeon challenges, and large-scale clan PVP, the game further adds systems such as offline auto-grinding, free class switching, and automatic growth. To some extent, this reduces the progression burden of traditional MMOs and better fits current mobile users' demand for lighter experiences. Judging by its launch performance, if the game can continue optimizing the new-player experience in later operations while maintaining an active clan ecosystem and trading economy, Lineage 2: Covenant may have a chance to occupy a relatively stable position in the existing MMO market with the help of its classic IP influence.

Next is Fat Goose Food Street, a casual merge-and-management product published by Xingyi Network and developed by Haoteng Chuangxiang (Crazy Games). As a new Fat Goose IP title after Fat Goose Gym, the game continues the soft, healing art style and round, chubby goose image of its predecessor. With “rebuilding a food street” as its core theme, it further extends existing IP assets into the popular food-management scenario. Combined with the user base accumulated by the product on mini-game platforms, this laid a certain data foundation for the title. According to ranking-trend data from Diandian Data's WeChat mini-program charts, its ranking on the grossing chart has remained steadily within the top 50.

In addition, Fairy Tale Master, a healing simulation-management mobile game launched by Aiyou Network under 4399, attracted attention in the early launch stage with its low-saturation hand-drawn art style, fairy-tale theme, and high degree of decoration freedom. On release day, it topped the App Store free games chart in the Chinese mainland market and continued to hold the top spot during the Dragon Boat Festival holiday. However, the game's relatively slow overall pace and theme also meant that its monetization performance was not particularly outstanding compared with its popularity on the free chart.

Turning to overseas markets, nine new titles entered our field of view last month. The overall number dropped sharply, but data performance improved significantly compared with the previous month. This month, Japanese and Korean developers made a strong return, while global IPs such as Pokemon and Game of Thrones demonstrated powerful traffic appeal, becoming important drivers of overseas new-game data growth. At the same time, these two regional markets also contributed considerable revenue performance.

Among the new titles released overseas at the end of May, Clash of Critters, a level-based card tower-defense product launched by Farlight Games, Lilith's overseas publishing brand, continued to scale after the statistical period was extended and maintained stable data performance across Europe, the United States, Southeast Asia, and other regional markets. According to Diandian Data, as of the end of June, the title accumulated more than 5.61 million downloads in its first month across global markets outside the Chinese mainland, while estimated revenue exceeded $10.33 million, approximately RMB 70.01 million.

The 3D Chinese-style xianxia MMO Qingqiu World: Origin, published by JOYSTAR GAME, continued to achieve relatively high conversion in markets such as Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, China, and Malaysia, helped by its distinctive romance-social operation strategy. The popularity of the “Flower Oath Immortal Journey · Citywide Romance” themed event launched in early June drove the product's single-day estimated revenue in Taiwan, China above $540,000, helping it achieve an impressive first-month estimated revenue of more than $7.33 million.

In addition, two other products launched at the end of May broke out this month. The first was Dragon Village 3, the official numbered sequel in the Dragon Village series published by Highbrow. Concentrated fan return driven by the revival of the classic IP, combined with launch-period benefits such as a seven-day login reward offering a Legendary Dragon Selection Box, helped the product continue to break out in South Korea as well as Hong Kong, China, Macao, China, and Taiwan, China markets.

The second was Duck Survival, a post-apocalyptic Roguelike tower-defense shooter launched by Joy Net Games, 4399's overseas publishing brand. With the contrasting theme of “ducks fighting zombies” as its core packaging, the title continues the benefit-driven and fast-scaling strategy the publisher previously used for products such as Legend of Mushroom. Through abundant early gacha resources, an easy-to-learn tower-defense shooting experience, and a clear core loop of “recruit - build - battle,” the game quickly attracted user attention in T1 markets represented by the United States, France, and Germany. From the revenue data trend, its single-day data is still continuing to rise.

Returning to the new titles that made the June charts, overseas new-game products are still divided by revenue data. The first tier is led by SOL: enchant, a new MMORPG released by Netmarble in its home market of South Korea. Created with participation from former core Lineage M producers, the game uses Unreal Engine 5 visuals, a divine-right system, a free economy, and core MMO competitive experiences as its selling points. Within only two weeks of launch, it generated more than $20.47 million in estimated revenue in South Korea, approximately RMB 138 million, once again validating Netmarble's publishing capabilities in the Korean market and the paid-conversion potential of this type of product there.

In terms of gameplay, SOL: enchant continues the core framework common to Korean MMOs, including open-world exploration, character development, open-field monster grinding, trading economy, and offline auto-grinding, while differentiating itself through the “divine-right system.” This system allows all players on a server to compete for divine authority, ultimately becoming the server's “absolute god,” and to obtain abilities at different permission stages, including battlefield intervention, server-wide buffs, exchange-tax revenue, and even the ability to influence update pacing and certain game rules. Compared with traditional MMOs, it further strengthens top players' sense of identity and domination, becoming the core reason behind the product's short-term revenue explosion.

The second tier is represented by Pokemon Champions, the official new Pokemon IP mobile battle title launched by The Pokemon Company. Within less than two weeks of its May launch, the game generated more than 4.56 million downloads and over $5.86 million in estimated revenue. The title focuses its content highly on Pokemon battles themselves, using multiple battle modes to precisely serve core players in the Pokemon product series who have clear demand for competitive PVP, laying a foundation for revenue performance.

In addition, the game not only connects data and matchmaking ecosystems with the Switch version, but also supports transferring Pokemon from titles such as Pokemon Scarlet/Violet and Pokemon GO into the game through Pokemon HOME. This lowers migration costs for veteran players and attracts more IP-audience users, while more importantly amplifying the value of collectible assets accumulated by the series over the long term. Therefore, the significance of Pokemon Champions lies more in becoming an important mobile foothold for the IP.

Next, two products with revenue above $3 million are placed in the third tier. The first is Game of Thrones: Dragonfire, launched by Warner Bros. Games and HBO. Built on the world of the House of the Dragon TV series, the title uses selling points highly aligned with the original work, such as “riding dragons into battle,” “family alliances,” and “territory conquest.” It also provides HBO Max account-linking rewards, allowing players to unlock in-game rewards by watching Season 3 of House of the Dragon. This fully leverages the global influence of the Game of Thrones IP and helped the title achieve solid results in the early launch stage.

The other is Dragon Raja: Cassell's Gate, released for the Japanese market by Archosaur Games. The Chinese server version of the title launched at the end of 2024, and the Korean version was released in March as its first overseas stop. While the Japanese version inherits a mature gameplay model, it launched with a collaboration with the well-known anime The Seven Deadly Sins and introduced the “Interlude of Fate” themed event. With the addition of popular SSR characters such as Meliodas and Elizabeth, the product also achieved a good start in the Japanese market.

The fourth tier consists of other products with revenue at the million-dollar level. The first is Soul Land: Awakening World, an open-world MMORPG adapted from the online-literature IP Douluo Dalu and published by G-LI NETWORK, a brand under 37 Interactive Entertainment. As the series' first 3D open-world MMO product, its biggest feature is the non-lock-on action system it adopts, with dodging, aerial movement, and skill chaining strengthening the operational feel and combat satisfaction. Relying on the IP's influence in Traditional Chinese-language and Southeast Asian markets, the title achieved a strong start thanks to excellent performance in Vietnam, Thailand, and other markets.

The second is RF ONLINE NEXT, a sci-fi MMORPG launched by Netmarble. This release is the international server version of the product, which had already accumulated mature operational experience through the earlier Asian server. As the official sequel to the classic PC-game IP RF Online, the title continues the original's core framework of long-term confrontation among three factions around resources and Holy Stones, while using Unreal Engine 5 to comprehensively upgrade sci-fi battlefields, mech equipment, and large-scale faction wars. Its estimated revenue of more than $2.15 million within half a month is within expectations.

Finally, there is Dot Abyss, a pixel-style idle loot-farming RPG launched by DMM GAMES' new label Kumasan Black and published by EXNOA. As the new label's first product, the title set the fastest record in DMM GAMES history with more than 700,000 pre-registrations. Centered on the worldview of exploring the “Great Abyss,” the game combines idle progression with Hack & Slash loot-farming experiences, building a relatively clear long-term loop through character collection, automatic combat, equipment drops, and base development. Its overall pace is lightweight, but feedback is dense and the sense of satisfaction is strong.

Overall, the global new-game market in June showed a certain recovery compared with May. As the summer season officially begins, competition in the new-game market may intensify further.