Opinion: the Japanese gaming market is not for foreigners
Japan spends a lot on mobile games. However, success is far from guaranteed for Western developers in this country,” says Serkan Toto, an analyst at Kantan Games studio.
At the Casual Connect Asia conference, he told what difficulties a foreigner may face when trying to enter the Japanese mobile market.
Local ARPPU figures are among the highest in the world – the average user spends up to $65 per month on mobile games. But at the same time, a Western developer may not get a cent from them.
Why? “The Japanese market is one of the most difficult markets in the whole world,” says Toto. This is a very closed market. Almost all revenue from mobile games is divided between two titles: Puzzle & Dragons and Monster Strike. Spending on these two projects accounts for 70% to 80% of all spending on mobile games in the local market.
In addition, Japanese users prefer local games.
“Big [foreign] companies have so much self-confidence! Every time I try to convey to them that the Japanese will tell them “Who are you anyway? We don’t care what you have achieved in the USA or Europe,” Toto says.
Statistics are on his side. If we talk about console titles, from 2001 to 2013, not a single foreign game was included in the local top 100 most popular games.
So the best advice that can be given to a foreign developer is to stay away from the Japanese market, Toto believes. An exception should be made only if all other world markets are already covered and there is simply nowhere to go – or if you have a huge marketing budget.
In the case of Supercell, King Imashin Zone, the second rule worked, says Toto. However, with all the marketing costs, the titles of these companies failed to overtake their two main local competitors – Puzzle & Dragons and Monster Strike. Their indicators are not even close to the same as in other countries.
If there is no budget for promotion, then the project should have the following characteristics:
- have unworn game mechanics, high-quality art and focus on a narrow specific audience;
- distributed through a local publisher;
- have an excellent monetization mechanism that will allow you to maintain revenue at a certain level even with a relatively small number of users.
Otherwise, the game is not worth the candle, Toto sums up.
A source: http://venturebeat.com
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