Weekly Gaming Reports Recap: March 2 – March 6, 2026

This weekly recap from GameDev Reports covers two data sources released during March 2–6, 2026: AppMagic's February 2026 mobile rankings and an exclusive summary of a CADPA report on China's 2025 gaming industry, prepared with Meridian Play and originally presented at a Shanghai conference in December 2025.

On mobile, AppMagic data (revenue net of store fees and taxes, excluding Chinese Android stores) shows Honor of Kings holding the top revenue spot for the second straight month of 2026, with $135 million on iOS alone. Last War: Survival followed at $128.2 million, and PUBG Mobile took third at $118.2 million, its best result since August 2025. Gossip Harbor earned $77.7 million, down from January but enough to overtake Candy Crush Saga at $71.7 million. Download leaders were unchanged: Block Blast! at 24.2 million, Free Fire at 20.7 million, and Roblox at 18.8 million, while Magic Tiles 3 jumped to 8.7 million.

The China section reports that the domestic market generated 350.8 billion yuan (about $50.1 billion) in 2025, up 7.68% and accelerating after the 2022 slump of 10.33%. Mobile accounts for 73.29% of revenue, client-based PC games 22.28%, and browser games just 1.23%, excluding the fast-growing WeChat segment. MOBA (19.5%), shooters (18.3%), and RPGs (15.1%) lead by genre. The console market, including hardware, grew 86.33% year over year. Mini-games and multiplatform releases are expected to grow in 2026.

Chinese games abroad earned $20.455 billion in 2025, up 10.23% for a second consecutive year of double-digit growth. The top overseas markets were the US (32.31%), Japan (16.35%), South Korea (9.15%), Germany (3.84%), and the UK (2.92%); Japan alone lost share. Strategy and SLG titles make up 49.97% of the top 100 overseas mobile games by revenue, ahead of shooters (9.69%) and RPGs (9.39%).