Marvel Future Fight rides ‘Avengers’ film success to global mobile domination

Everyone is crazy about dinosaurs right now thanks to the megablockbuster Jurassic World, but that doesn’t mean people have put to bed their love of the Marvel superhero properties.

Marvel: Future Fight, an action role-playing game from Korean publisher Netmarble, was one of the hugely successful new mobile releases in May, according to industry-tracking firm App Annie. The game was able to ride the launch of Avengers: Age of Ultron to huge download numbers on a worldwide basis. This further cements mobile as the best place for a movie tie-in game. Historically, game adaptations of films, especially on consoles and PC, have a reputation as low-quality attempts to cash in on something popular. But with the low cost and high revenue potential of mobile, movie games have found a viable market on smartphones.

App Annie explains just how viable smartphone gaming is for big properties like Marvel in its report:

“Released alongside blockbuster movie hit Avengers: Age of Ultron, Korean publisher Netmarble’s new action role-playing game took Google Play and iOS by storm, reaching No. 6 on our May Worldwide Google Play and iOS downloads chart. The game represents new territory for Netmarble, both in its use of a Western intellectual property and in the degree of global success it achieved.”

Netmarble has previously released successful games on mobile with Everybody’s Marble, Seven Knights and Monster Taming. But while those apps made money, the revenue primarily came from Asian countries. Marvel: Future Fight, however, was the No. 1 most downloaded game in more than 40 countries around the world.

Of course, this has far more to do with the Marvel property than it does with Netmarble. This is just the latest superhero game to reach this level of appeal, and it’s probably not going to slow down anytime soon either.

“As long as Marvel movies continue to rank among the world’s highest grossing films, we won’t be surprised to see this pattern of success for Marvel IPs continue on mobile,” reads the App Annie report. “More generally, mobile games that feature well known Hollywood IPs have continued to perform exceptionally well throughout the years, even as the mobile gaming landscape has changed.”