Nexon has announced that DomiNations has generated more than $100m in revenue since its launch in 2015.

The mobile strategy game, which sees players build an empire that evolves from the Stone Age to the Space Age, was developed by Big Huge Games and has been a crucial pillar in the Korean publisher’s plans to expand into the Western market.

DomiNations has gathered an audience of more than 32m players since its launch two years ago this month, most significantly in the US and Europe – markets in which Nexon’s titles have previously struggled to make as much of an impact as in territories closer to the company’s home.

Over 25m of DomiNations playerbase is in the West, with a still-not-too-shabby 7m players across Asia. Nexon now considers the game to be one of three success stories when it comes to “sustained engagement”, placing it alongside long-running titles MapleStory and Dungeon&Fighter.

It helps that Big Huge Games is a Western developer, based in North America, whereas the other aforementioned Nexon titles are developed in Asia. The firm has been investing in more Western games, including LawBreakers – the debut title from Cliff Bleszinski’s new studio Boss Key Productions – and Cambridge-based toys-to-life developer PlayFusion.

“Nexon games are well-established with millions of deeply engaged players in Asia,” said Nexon president and CEO Owen Mahoney. “The success of DomiNations in the US and Europe, is a proof point in our strategy for growing our business and engaging Western players with high quality games backed by a steady flow of new content.”

Newzoo’s latest quarterly update for its Global Games Market Report forecasts that the global games business will grow to $108.9 billion this year, with mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) generating a lion’s share of the revenue. Newzoo called mobile the “most lucrative segment” while noting that it should grow 19% year-on-year to $46.1 billion, which would represent 42% of the market. By 2020, mobile gaming will represent just over half of the total games market, the firm said.

While mobile includes tablet gaming revenues, the sector is clearly dominated by smartphones. Of the $46 billion expected this year, Newzoo said $35.3 billion will come from smartphone gaming; at the same time, tablet unit sales “have plummeted,” Newzoo commented. Even so, there are 280 million tablets being actively used worldwide, contributing more than $10 billion to worldwide gaming revenues.

One of the big reasons for mobile’s continued growth is the rise of China’s gaming market. Overall, APAC territories will generate $51.2 billion (47% of the global total) this year, Newzoo said, and China will be responsible for one quarter of all global game revenues, reaching $27.5 billion this year. That’s notable because it outpaces the US games industry, which is expected to reach $25.1 billion. Mobile revenues in China, expected to be led mostly by Tencent and NetEase, should come in at $11.2 billion for 2016, Newzoo said, and that’s expected to rise to $14.6 billion this year.

Even without China, Japan and Korea, the rest of Asia is expected to be the fastest-growing region in the world in the coming years, with total game revenues growing to $10.5 billion in 2020, up from $4.5 billion last year. That said, North America remains a massive market as the second largest region with estimated revenues of $27.0 billion in 2017 (up 4% year-on-year). That growth, although less impressive, will also be driven by mobile, which is not yet saturated. “Growth is fueled by a combination of a higher share of spenders as well as average spend per paying gamer. We see the same trend in EMEA which we expect to reach $26.2 billion in 2017. Latin America will grow to $4.4. billion in game revenues this year,” Newzoo commented.

Looking at the console and PC gaming segments, Newzoo said that console gaming should generate a total of $33.5 billion in revenues worldwide, with almost two-thirds of that coming from digital. Last year, Microsoft and Sony alone generated more than $14 billion in combined console revenues from first-party games, third-party game fees, and subscription revenues. While console has been faring better than expected, Newzoo noted that PC is seeing increased engagement but a decrease in sales. “We now expect downloaded/boxed PC games to reach $24.5 billion in 2019, a significant adjustment downwards compared to the $29.0 billion global figure for PC games in our January update,” the firm said.

Part of the problem for PC on the digital side has been the drop in browser and social games, and the shift for casual users over to mobile. “PC browser revenues have been decreasing since 2015 because of the transition of casual gaming to mobile devices. In 2016, Facebook’s revenues from gaming were at their lowest since 2011 while Zynga’s PC revenues dropped more than 30%,” Newzoo said.

Asian mobile giant Netmarble has generated $2.3bn (£1.8bn) with its IPO, readying the firm for a series of significant acquisitions.

Reuters reports the share sale was the second-biggest ever recorded in Netmarble’s home market of South Korea with Netmarble claiming it has sold 17m shares, which equates to roughly 20% of the company. Shares were sold at 157,000 Korean Won (or £107) each.

The firm came just short of the $2.4bn it estimated it would make through the IPO.

A large part of Netmarble’s success was not just its “ability to consistently publish hit games in the highly competitive mobile sector”, as Reuters puts it, but also the accomplishments of one specific title – Lineage II: Revolutions.

Released only in South Korea back in December, the Unreal Engine-powered mobile MMO was named as the highest grossing game in the world back in February, according to figures from SuperData.

Netmarble is also based in the world’s fourth biggest games market, behind only China, the US and Japan.

The company has previously said it plans to combine money raised from the IPO with loans and its own cash flow to spend up to $4.4bn on acquisitions. Specifically, Netmarble hopes to purchased games developers and IP holders that will help expand its share of the games market in North America and Europe. It hopes to become a global top five games company by 2020.