Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s new game, Dungeon & Fighter Mobile (DnF), brought in $270 million on iOS in the first 30 days after its May 21 launch, more than doubling the sales of long-standing Chinese best-seller Honor of Kings, reports Bloomberg.
DnF now takes the top spot in both downloads and revenue in the country, data released by industry tracker Sensor Tower on Monday showed. The performance, which exceeded analyst expectations, marked the biggest debut of the year for Tencent and is widely seen as the best candidate to generate recurring revenue like Honor of Kings, long China’s most lucrative title.
Tencent hastened the release of DnF Mobile to May after positive feedback in testing, touting the game as a blockbuster that would rekindle growth in its key domestic games division. After Sensor Tower’s report Monday, Niko Partners analyst Xiaofeng Zeng revised up his estimate for DnF Mobile’s 2024 gross revenue to between RMB 15 billion ($2.1 billion) and RMB 18 billion. Even at roughly $1 billion, DnF Mobile would contribute approximately 5% of Tencent’s domestic game sales this year.