Minecraft just had its best year on mobile with over $110 million in revenue in 2018

Even though the launch of Fortnite and PUBG on mobile hugely contributed to the battle royale frenzy last year, these free-to-play games didn’t really hurt Minecraft, one of the most popular paid games on iOS and Android. Indeed, according to new data from app analytics platform Sensor Tower (via Gameindustry.biz), 2018 was Minecraft’s most profitable year on mobile with the iOS and Android versions bringing more than $110 million in revenue for Microsoft (up 7% year over year).

Minecraft is a $6.99 purchase on iOS and Android, but there are also lots of in-app purchases to unlock skins and more. “The largest portion of spending in the game last year came from the United States, at 48 percent of the total or approximately $52.8 million. Great Britain’s $7.3 million (about 6.6 percent) was a distant second, while Japan ranked third for spending at 5 percent or approximately $5.5 million,” Sensor Tower’s report notes.

Microsoft’s immensely popular sandbox game hugely benefited from the launch of the new Bedrock version, which brought support for crossplay multiplayer across iOS, Android, Windows 10, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. This is all done through Microsoft’s Xbox Live platform, which Microsoft wants to bring to more iOS, Android and Switch games with a new cross-platform XDK.

According to Sensor Tower, the mobile versions of Minecraft generated $500 million of revenue for Microsoft since 2014. That’s definitely not bad for a game with 91 million monthly active users on all platforms, but Fortnite has been doing even better for Epic Games. Earlier this month, Sensor Tower reported that Fortnite mobile revenue reached $500 million on iOS in less than a year.