On episode 72 of This Week in Games, Sensor Tower speculates that the word game genre will continue to grow, and Roblox raises $150 million with the help of Andreessen Horowitz.
The State of Word Games
- Future modeling using Sensor Tower’s store intelligence data shows that this year the word game genre will expand both its share of global downloads and its reach.
- Sensor Tower predicts revenue for the genre will +19% YoY, and downloads will +7% on iOS.
- Sensor Tower believes increased spend from APAC is fueling this growth.
- PM Director at WB Games, Adam Tefler, finds assessing potential by IAP revenue misleading, since word games are dominated by ad-based revenue.
Roblox Raises $150 million in Series G Funding
- Funding is led by Andreessen Horowitz’s late-stage venture fund.
- Roblox’s 2 million active developers earned $110 million in 2019, which is +63% YoY.
- TechCrunch reports Roblox is now valued at $4 billion.
- Considering how profitable Roblox is, Tefler thinks this is senior level Roblox employees cashing out their equity.
- Tefler believes Roblox’s biggest challenge is to get older with their fan base.
- Microsoft is building a lot of sandbox games targeting an older audience to possibly entice lapsed Minecraft players.
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