Chart watch, March

March produced no new name at the top of either chart. Strategy and survival titles held the grossing top ten through the winter and stayed put through March with the order barely shifting week to week, puzzle kept the heavy share of the download chart it has held for most of the first quarter, and nothing in the public reporting points to a breakout launch cracking either top ten this month, which after an eventful start to the year counts as a small data point in itself.

This chart watch's genre observation

What is notable is the absence of an entrant rather than the arrival of one. GDC ran in the second week of March and AI-in-production dominated the stage, but none of it has turned up yet as a chart-moving launch. That is normal. Conference themes reach UA data two or three quarters later, once a studio that sat through a session actually ships something built on it, rather than in the month the talk happened.

What it means for buyers

A quiet chart month is a good moment to test rather than chase. When the top of the chart isn't moving, the cost of testing a new creative angle against an established competitor set is more predictable than it is in a month when a breakout title resets everyone's benchmarks. Treat March as a baseline. Then watch April for whether any of the GDC-adjacent production themes start showing up in real launches instead of conference sessions. One late-month development belongs against that baseline rather than in this month's plan. Unity confirmed on March 26 and 27 that the ironSource Ads network will shut down at the end of April, redirecting the company's focus to Unity Vector.

That is a network story rather than a chart story, and the two connect: legacy ad-network supply shrinking mid-quarter tends to push reallocated budget toward whichever channels are already stable and well-optimised, which is exactly the incumbent set this chart watch has been describing since February. If the charts still haven't moved by the time this column runs again, a chunk of the credit may belong to displaced ironSource spend landing on familiar names rather than to anything those titles did differently in March. Same chart, different reason.

Related archive reading

• Chart Watch, October: Mobile Game Ad Spend Charts
• Chart Watch, September: Mobile Game Download Charts