According to Japanese mobile specialist Metaps, the local market is undergoing a subtle shift in terms of the strengths of different top grossing genres.

Looking back over the period July to September 2014, the #1 category of role-playing games has increased its domination.

Its share of top grossing games on the Japanese Google Play chart has risen from 17 percent to 19 percent.

Cutting the deck

Meanwhile, over-saturation and perhaps even audience boredom have seen card-collection games drop from over 10 percent to 9 percent; quite a significant shift during the three month period.

Casual and simulation games are the #2 and #3 categories, both accounting for around 10 percent market share.

Looking at specific titles, Metap points to gumi's global hit Brave Frontier, COLOPL's The White Cat Project and Marvelous/Aiming's Logres of Swords and Sorcery as RPGs with consistently high rankings within the top 10 chart.

[source: Metaps]