September was a very down month as gamers went back to school, and the fall weather started to cool down the hot nights of gaming. With that came a downturn in game sales. But October brought about a few new games that excited many gamers in China, and one becoming a big hit in the west, bringing the highest sales month since earlier this year.

Some of the key findings for this month include:

• Mobile game sales went up to 18.5 billion CNY, making it the highest sales month in the past six months.
• New game, Genshin Impact, made an impact, hitting #3 in Chinese game sales in its first full month.
• Honor of Kings and Game for Peace stay #1 and #2
• Thirteen new games were released in October.

October Game sales

With a growth of 15.96% MoM (the highest in six months), revenues grew to 18.5 billion yuan. This doesn’t seem to be stopping with big hits coming out during the late fall, pushing to hit projected yearly sales of 21.2 billion USD, according to Statista.

With this growth returns the big push of ARPG and MMORPGs compared to last year. Currently, 26% of the top 50 games are ARPG/MMORPG compared to the previous year of 20%, with a considerable drop from turn-based RPGs, shooters, and racing games.

New blood in the Top 10

With the hugely successful marketing push by Genshin Impact developers miHoYo, the game jumped to the third slot, overtaking Cocos-built games Three Kingdoms: Tactics and Fantasy Westward Journey. Lilith Games (makers of Cocos-based AFK Arena) had their game Rise of Kingdom jump to the top of the list, thanks to their big marketing campaign discussed last month and Genshin Impact jumped quickly to reach the top spots this month thanks to it's own marketing campaigns as well.

But we’re happy to see so many games built with Cocos still in the top 10. We’re excited to see how many more join as we head to 3D with Cocos Creator 3.0 Beta coming in a few weeks.

There were only 13 newly released games last month compared to the over 20 games from the past two consecutive months. They brought a lot of firepower. Genshin Impact blasted a media attack on both Chinese and Western media, making it one of the most globally played games built in China this year.

The game made 245 million USD in the month worldwide, beating out global revenues of games like PUBG Mobile, Pokemon Go, and Cocos-built game, Monster Strike. We have to congratulate the team at miHoYo for their efforts and see how the game does for the remainder of the year.