Apple's gaming profits beat PlayStation and Xbox combined

According to a Wall Street Journal analysis with which Apple somewhat disagrees, its gaming-related operating profit of $8.5 billion for a 12-month period was more than those of Sony, Activision, Nintendo, and Microsoft taken together.
During the Epic trial deliberations, Apple's lawyers disputed such analyses of mobile gaming profits saying they are inflated by a large margin.
Even if the external consultants' observations are off the mark, though, Apple is obviously still doing very well in gaming revenue, just like Android's Play Store has its top 10 grossing apps be almost exclusively games.
The risk for Apple is that its role as the gatekeeper between the gaming world and its more than 1 billion iPhone users as well as the fee it collects as the middleman could be disrupted—whether by legislation, court order or regulatory action. Epic sued the company in 2020, alleging that it stifled competition. Because of Epic’s lawsuit and increased scrutiny of Apple’s sway, lawmakers and regulators from Washington to Brussels are considering ways to potentially upend the company’s power, which some fear hurts rivals.
Another threat to Apple’s profit engine comes from China. New rules in that country aim to decrease the number of hours young people can play games. Three of the top five grossing mobile games in the App Store are from China, including the No. 1 title “Honor of Kings” from Tencent, which generated an estimated $2.5 billion last year from users, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower.
Globally, customers spent a total of $45 billion on mobile games through the App Store in fiscal 2020, according to Sensor Tower. Almost 31% of that money was spent in China while 26% was in the U.S.; Apple’s cut came out to an estimated $13.5 billion or about 5% of Apple’s overall sales that year of $275 billion. Fifty percent of Apple’s revenue came from hardware sales of iPhones.
Apple doesn’t break out revenue from the App Store; instead it includes the business as part of its services category, which it said generated $53.8 billion in sales last year. That category also includes music, iCloud, Apple TV, advertising and extended warranties. It doesn’t say how profitable each of its product categories is but disclosed an overall company operating profit of $66.29 billion during the period.

sources:
wj, wjs (archive) and phonearena