With an explosive growth in both investment and sales revenue, Chengdu Hi-tech Zone in Sichuan province has become a new engine in the field of mobile games.

Mobile game developers in Chengdu Hi-tech Zone attracted direct investment of more than $20 million, and reached total sales revenue of 300 million yuan ($48 million), according to the management committee of Chengdu Hi-tech Zone.

A recent list of Top 52 App publishers in terms of their income in 2013 by App Annie, a leading App Store analytics company, showed that two mobile game developers from Chengdu Hi-tech Zone hit the list again.

Digital sky and Tap4fun were the only Chinese publishers on App Annie's 2012 list. Their ranking respectively rose to 35 and 37 from 48 and 52 on the 2013 list.

Earlier this year, Seven Stars 3D, a popular mobile game by Chengdu Ideal Technology Ltd, won a grand prize at the Tizen App Challenge, a global competition with over $4 million in prizes held in Barcelona this year.

Chengdu Hi-tech Zone has gathered a total of more than 600 mobile Internet companies, most of which are mobile game developers, according to the management committee.

Chengdu is the only city in China's central and western regions to make the top 10 in terms of Internet innovation and entrepreneurship, according to a ranking list issued by Tencent's open platform in April.

Chengdu Hi-tech Zone has carried out a series of policies to support mobile Internet developers, including 1 billion yuan in financial support.