Exclusive: Kakao is not the same anymore?

Does Kakao’s support increase box office figures in South Korea? App2Top was being analyzed, inspired by the Pocket Gamer material. 

Today, a curious piece by John Jordan appeared on Pocket Gamer, the main idea of which is that Kakao no longer plays a critical role in the Korean market. In other words, it has turned into another showcase. 

John bases his conclusion on the fact that, despite the large number of downloads of Despicable Me: Minion Rush for Kakao, the game showed far from the best results in the Korean market in terms of cash. 

They say, this is especially noticeable when compared with the indicators in the USA for the entire period of the application’s existence, which means that Kakao is no longer the same (and not a cake). 

This comparison seemed rather strange to us. For this reason, we did our own little research. In it, we compared the indicators of the original project in three markets for three periods of time.

MarketsWe took, of course, Korean, Japanese, as the closest to Korean, as well as Russian, which is close to Western in terms of projects, but which continues to grow at a tremendous pace, which is closer to the “eastern dragons”.

TimeThe first month after the world release is June 12 (South Korea, Japan, Russia);

• Three weeks of “Despicable Me 2” rental on movie screens + a week before that, as the most active in terms of promoting the tape (South Korea, Japan, Russia);
• A month since the release of the Kakao version of Despicable Me: Minion Rush (South Korea). 

The first month after the release

South KoreaDespicable Me: Minion Rush appeared for the first time in Korea back on June 13.

And went very well. According to downloads, the project reached the 2nd position in the free top of iPhone applications on the very first weekend. However, a month later he slipped to 71 places.

Its box office results are hardly outstanding, although, on the other hand, the 64th position in grossing is very good. 

JapanIn the Japanese market, everything was worse in terms of downloads.

The maximum of the first month in terms of downloads is 13th place in the free top.

Grossing turned out to be even worse. The game reached 261 places and began to fall. 

RussiaIn our homeland, the project lasted for five days in the top and more than a month in the top ten.

The cash maximum in our market is 21 places. And this is with a huge love for minions! 

Indicators for film distribution

South KoreaInterest in the game in Korea returned after the release of the film on September 1, but it was a very minor surge in activity.

In addition, most likely, at that time Gameloft had already decided to publish the project together with Kakao, and therefore did not pour traffic into it. On September 5, the game was “cut out” from the store.

The box office maximum of the game in the Korean store in the last weeks of its existence is 355th place.

JapanThe premiere of the cartoon in Japan took place only on September 21.

It is clear that in a week (if not more), resources began to be invested in its promotion. This was reflected in the downloads of the game. The project entered the top ten free iPhone apps in the Land of the Rising Sun a week before the premiere.

However, this did not help the game in terms of cash. Despicable Me: Minion Rush didn’t earn enough to enter even a hundred.

RussiaThe day before the release of the picture (August 15), for some reason, the game reached its August minimum – the 15th position in the free top.

But then her indicators went up.

But grossing was going down. 

Release Despicable Me: Minion Rush for Kakao

And now let’s see what happened to the game after it appeared in the list of applications of the most popular messenger in Korea. Only here, most importantly, we must not forget that up to this point the game has already been released on the Korean market and even had some popularity on it.

The game reached the second place in the free top (thanks, traffic) and stayed on it for a couple of days.

Box office figures jump almost to the June high (cool, right?! the old game is released a second time and it gets to the same marks), but then there is a collapse.

Actually, we wouldn’t say that everything is so bad with Kakao. There are rather questions about the game, which, firstly, has exhausted all its resources on the market, and, secondly, was made for the American market, and has not undergone any major changes, having got into a different environment.

What do you think?