Data & Research

Monster Strike finally snatches Japanese #1 top grossing spot from Puzzle & Dragons

Report reveals the winds of change in Japan's app charts

Monster Strike finally snatches Japanese #1 top grossing spot from Puzzle & Dragons

After two years perched atop the Japanese Google Play and App Store charts, Puzzle & Dragons has finally been stripped of its title as the number one top grossing app in Japan.

The plucky usurper is none other than Mixi's Monster Strike, a card-collecting RPG that owes a lot to the successes of franchises like Pokémon and Digimon.

Strike first

The change of fortune has been charted by Japanese analytics outfit Metaps, which noticed that November 2014 was the first month that Monster Strike managed to spend more days than Puzzle & Dragons in the number one spot - both on Google Play and the App Store.

On Google Play, Monster Strike was #1 for 16 days compared to 13 for Puzzle & Dragons. On App Store, the score was 18 to 12 in Monster Strike's favour. 

Interestingly, the sheer scale of both games' success is made clear by the fact that no other game has come close to number one in the Japanese Google Play charts this year.

Over on the App Store, only Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light and The White Cat Project have managed to muscle their way into the number one ranking.

Games are tops

Metaps also took a look at popular categories of apps in both charts, and found that games have found a stronger grounding on Android than iOS in Japan.

According to the data, 94 percent of the top 100 ranking apps on the Japanese Google Play grossing chart were games. On the App Store, the figure was 87 per cent.

Likewise, the top free charts for both stores revealed that 50 per cent of the top 100 ranking Apps on Google Play Japan were games, compared to 36 per cent on the App Store.

In other words, Metaps report reveals that games hold a greater Japanese market share of both the best-selling and most downloaded apps on Google Play.

[source: Metaps]

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