Sensor Tower’s Mobile Gaming Leaders for March 2016

Last month was another big one for mobile gaming, with the App Store in particular showing significant year-over-year download growth according to Sensor Tower's Store Intelligence platform. Worldwide, the iOS store's Games category grew 16 percent YOY from 546 million downloads in March 2015 to 633 million downloads last month. Year-over-year U.S. downloads for the category grew slightly less during the same period at 12 percent, from 145 million to 162 million.

This month, we're adding top 10 rankings for mobile games on Google Play to our newly re-christened Mobile Gaming Leaders report. Keep reading to find out which games and publishers captured the largest number of new installs in the U.S. and worldwide on both Apple and Google's mobile storefronts.

About This Data

The following charts were created using U.S. and worldwide daily download estimates generated by Sensor Tower's Store Intelligence platform for the period of March 1 through March 31, 2016. For Android downloads, only estimated installs from the Google Play Store were counted. Sensor Tower does not provide download estimates for third-party Android stores.

Top iOS and Google Play Combined Game Downloads: Clash is King

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To kick things off this month, we're introducing our new combined App Store and Google Play game downloads rankings. As you can see, both charts were topped by the same game: Clash Royale from Supercell. As we anticipated last month, the title made an absolutely massive worldwide debut following a successful soft launch in selected territories earlier this year.

The worldwide chart above tells the full story, and it's a doozy—Clash Royale amassed more than twice as many new installs globally on both platforms than the second-place game, Ketchapp's Stack. In fact, in less than a month it became the No. 9 app overall worldwide, something we covered in our newly published Q1 2016 Store Intelligence Data Digest.

On both the U.S. and worldwide charts, Fortafy Games' indie success story Color Switch held on strong, joined in the U.S. by another (practically) overnight success, Jump My Boy (previously known as Damn Daniel). Another newcomer—albeit from a much larger publisher—that performed quite well was Basketball Stars from Miniclip. Slightly less new, but still hanging on to a top 10 spot in both the U.S. and worldwide was King's Candy Crush Jelly Saga, although it slipped a few places on both charts.

Top iOS Game Downloads: Miniclip's Slam Dunk

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On the iOS front, Clash Royale was again the big winner both in the U.S. and worldwide. In fact, many of the same titles that ranked on both combined charts appeared here, albeit in different positions, with a couple of noteworthy additions.

The first of these was Simulator Hoverboard, which added more than one million installs on iOS in the U.S. during the month of March, proving that the hoverboard craze was still hot in the States—but thankfully not catching fire.

Gameloft's Disney Magic Kingdoms, a theme park building game, was the other major U.S. and worldwide standout, with nearly a million new players coming through its virtual turnstiles during its launch month, and more than 2.5 million worldwide.

Miniclip delivered a slam dunk with the worldwide release of Basketball Stars on iOS. It came in at No. 4 on both App Store charts for March, with more than two million downloads in the U.S. and six million worldwide on iOS alone. Clash Royale was still the king of new releases in the U.S. last month, but Miniclip's b-ball game was the second most successful new title on the domestic App Store.

Top Google Play Game Downloads: Jelly Saga's Strongest Platform

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Looking at Google Play for March, we see many of the same titles that found success on iOS. Clash Royale was—no surprise—the top performer. Basketball Stars was also a hit on U.S. Google Play, but it wasn't the only Miniclip title to chart, or even the best performing. The publisher also had 8 Ball Pool and Agar.io make the Google Play top 10 for the U.S. at No. 7 and No. 8, respectively.

Candy Crush Jelly Saga was absent from both the U.S. and worldwide top 10, but was decidedly more popular on Android. It ranked No. 5 in the U.S. and No. 10 worldwide for the month. While King's game dropped several spots on both charts, Stack rose dramatically to place No. 3 in the U.S. and No. 5 worldwide, proving to be nearly as successful ranking-wise on Google Play as iOS.

Join Us Next Month

Analysis of the launch of Disney Crossy Road and more await in 30 days or less. In the meantime, if you're an iOS or Android developer and want to see your own app's ranking history, you can do so in our App Intelligence product. Until next time, let us know what you think of these reports by tweeting @SensorTower or emailing randy@sensortower.com.