Mobile drives U.S. digital revenue to $1.1 billion in July

Rising mobile revenues pushed digital games sales in the U.S. to $1.1 billion in July - a year-on-year increase of 5.4 per cent.

According to a new report from SuperData, U.S. mobile game revenue rose 32 per cent year-on-year to $271 million. The most lucrative games were Candy Crush Saga - which generated an average of $438k a day in July - and Marvel War Heroes. Conversion rates across free-to-play titles were above an average of 5 per cent.

PC and console downloads were narrowly ahead of mobile games in terms of revenue with $286 million for the month. However, that figure represents a decline of 13 per cent over the previous year, largely due to the sluggish console market. Summer sales on distribution platforms like Steam buoyed the category, pushing PC download revenues to $158 million.

Social game revenues were a far cry from the highs of a few years ago, but the category improved by more than $30 million month-over-month to hit $164 million. The player-to-payer conversion rate was an average of 2.11 per cent on freemium titles.

In the MMO space, pay-to-play games brought in $7.6 million from 5.8 million players - a significantly reduced audience year-on-year thanks to the decline in World of Warcraft subscribers. Free-to-play MMOs were played by 45.8 million people, with the average spend among payers hitting an average of $40.