Asia accounts for half of total revenues from top 25 gaming companies

Market research firm Newzoo released financial data for the top 25 publicly-listed game companies this week. The 14 Asian companies on the list accounted for 49 percent of total revenue from the industry’s leaders.

As you may have expected, Chinese giant Tencent is in first place, boasting a whopping 40 percent year-on-year growth. A Newzoo report attributes this to Tencent’s strong showing in freemium mobile games, boosted by integration with its WeChat service. Its revenue in the first half of 2014 is 50 percent more than second-place Electronic Arts. EA is followed by Activision Blizzard, and then major console players Sony and Microsoft. The next Asian company on that list is GungHo Entertainment, which has edged its way into the top ten with a 29 percent year-on-year growth.

MapleStory developer Nexon is in tenth place, followed by Nintendo. Now we all know MapleStory is hot, but is it hotter than Mario? Nintendo’s poor showing is likely due to how poorly the Wii U—its competitor against next-gen giants the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One—has been doing, as well as the company just sticking steadfastly to its old-fashioned guns.

(See: Nintendo is 125 years old but still has some growing up to do)

Given the recent Nexon announcement, that it intends to increase its market share in American and European markets, it’s likely that Nexon will continue to grow. In contrast, DeNA has dropped seven places since last year, and is now in 14th place following a negative 31 percent growth. DeNA has been struggling to emulate its feature phone market success in the smartphone era, but its company report is anything to go by, it may soon be on an upward climb.

Although not listed, Japanese company Mixi, best known for having developed the mobile game Monster Strike, already has half year revenues of $128m. Monster Strike was released only in Q3 2013. Check out what other companies made the list:

(Newzoo via GamesIndustry.biz, cover image.)