Royal Kingdom’s $2.4m debut, Infinity Nikki’s launch and Pokémon TCG Pocket rivals Pokémon Go’s early success | Week in Views

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The games industry moves quickly and while stories may come and go there are some that we just can’t let go of…

So, to give those particularly thorny topics a further going over we’ve created a weekly digest where the members of the PocketGamer.biz team share their thoughts and go that little bit deeper on some of the more interesting things that have happened in mobile gaming in the past week.

Royal Kingdom makes $2.4m in 14 days, over triple Royal Match’s early earnings

Dream Games’ Royal Kingdom is off to a hot start. The follow-up to multi-billion dollar hit Royal Match, the new king of match-3 games, has already bagged $2.4 million in gross revenue during its first 14 days out of soft launch.

It’s not exactly at Royal Match levels, but the early signs are that it could grow into a monster hit. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see how things play out over the coming months. There’s always the chance it could quickly peak and find a fate similar to those Candy Crush Saga sequels – diminishing franchise returns.

What’s been particularly interesting over the past month is the number of big launches on mobile as we close out the year. Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket has already broken past $200 million to become one of the year’s biggest success stories. 

And just this week, two new hotly anticipated titles have launched: Infold Games’ Infinity Nikki – based off a series that has generated hundreds of millions of dollars on mobile – and Tencent’s Delta Force, which released on PC this week and is coming soon to mobile (it’s already out on mobile in China). At the time of writing, Delta Force peaked at 102,000 concurrent players today.

Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about how new hits are reshaping the top grossing mobile games charts. Some of these titles could be the next to break through.

Infinity Nikki launches today as series’ first cross-platform game

We’ve had some big game releases over the past few months, the latest among them being Infold Games’ new stylist adventure title, Infinity Nikki. I’m really interested in keeping an eye on this over the coming months. The Nikki series has created somewhat of a strong fanbase for itself with its dress-up gameplay.

However, this time around, we have something more of an open-world RPG game; there’s still that Nikki essence in there for older fans, but the larger scale and open-world exploration aspect will potentially attract a whole new audience. 

Then, of course, it’s the first game in the series to be cross-platform; being able to play across mobile, PC and consoles is a real highlight, which again broadens that potential player base. I like the idea of playing on my phone and then picking up the experience on my PS5, and it would likely keep me more invested in the long run, having that flexibility. 

With its cosy vibes, cross-platform efforts, and pre-existing fanbase, I think this one has great potential, and these early weeks after launch should be very telling. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket matches 91% of Pokémon Go’s launch month revenue through the power of playground rumours

In one month since its global launch, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket has earned over $200 million in gross player spending and become one of 2024’s most successful new mobile games.

The card-based game has had far and away the strongest debut of any mobile Pokémon title since Go, matching 91% of the geolocation giant’s own launch month earnings and beating Tencent’s Pokémon Unite by more than 700% on the platform.

Putting that in even more context, Pocket has made more than twice Pokémon Masters’ launch month revenue and already out-earned the lifetime revenues of Sleep and Café Remix.

All that to say, Pokémon TCG Pocket is big. Really big. And it’s got 90s nostalgia and modern-day playground rumours to thank.