Having recently been branded as the 'most lucrative game in the world', take up of Japan's top smartphone title – GungHo Online's Puzzle & Dragons – continues to gather pace.

Stats published by the developer peg downloads at 9 million, with said figure coming just 19 days after the game surged past 8 million.

To put that rise in some context, it originally took Puzzle & Dragons 146 days to hit its first 1 million downloads, with downloads now coming in at almost eight times that rate.

Million matters

Just what has triggered the game's ascent is naturally causing discussion aplenty amongst other developers looking for success in the region.

Whilee a portion of the 9 million downloads can be attributed to the game's multiplatform nature – Android and Kindle Fire versions launching months after the original iOS release – key to Puzzle & Dragons' rise appears to be television advertising.

Unlike the west, points out Tokyo-based consultant Serkan Toto, all the major players in the social gaming scene use TV ads to acquire users.

"It's not only Mobage operator DeNA, GREE or LINE that are using TV ads to promote games in Japan but also 'pure' content providers like KLab, Crooz, A-Team, Voltage, or newly listed enish," details Toto on his blog.
Puzzle & Dragons' first TV spot hit in October, with a second ad rolling out in September. The game jumped from amassing 1 million downloads every three months to hitting the same tally in 19 days flat.

TV times

"So in other words, growth – counted in million in this case – was accelerated by a factor of 5 through TV advertising," added Toto.

"GungHo succeeded in sustaining that growth rate from October to today."

The news comes less than a week after the game was estimated to be generating somewhere between $54 million and $76 million a month in revenue, with GungHo's market capitalisation htting $2.9 billion as a result – north of the likes of Zynga ($2.5 billion) and GREE ($2.8 billion).

[source: Serkan Toto]