This Mobile Game is Making $2 Million a Day

[The Wooster]

This Mobile Game is Making $2 Million a Day

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Puzzle & Dragons is sitting on a hoard of gold.

Ever wondered why developers seem to be flocking to the mobile market like them hills be full of gold? Well it's because them hills actually are full of gold. Puzzle & Dragons, a match-three puzzler from GungHo Online Entertainment, is supposedly bringing in around 6 billion yen ($64 million) a month.

According to details taken from the publisher's most-recent financial report - as translated by industry consultant, Serkan Toto - the game's 8 million registered players have been driving the company's significant growth. In the 2012 fiscal year, GungHo saw its sales grow by 168.8 percent and its profits by a whopping 690.1 percent.

So, what's Puzzle & Dragons? It's essentially what you'd get if you tried to cross breed Pokemon and Bejewled. The game is, of course, free-to-play. The microtransaction hook comes in the form of Magic Stones, which restore health, unlock new monsters and allow you to restart failed dungeons. GungHo has been selling a lot of Magic Stones.

The game was released in Japan last February, with an English version making it to the U.S. and Europe in November.

GungHo's growth shows no sign of stopping. According to the listed financial details for January of this year, sales have hit 9.5 billion yen, a 1022.4 percent increase year-over-year. Some of that cash went towards the acquisition of No More Heroes and Lollipop Chainsaw developer, Grasshopper Manufacture.


Source: Gamasutra [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186863/GungHo_grossing_estimated_2M_daily_from_a_single_mobile_game.php#.USPvbmdcN8H]



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[R.Nevermore]

Microtransactions... The way of the future. Sorry fellas!

 

[RA92]

... I feel slightly sick.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

It won't last. People eventually get tired of it and then they move on to something else.

 

[mateushac]

Now is the perfect time for them to just dissolve the company and run away with whatever they've made.

 

[JokerboyJordan]

Isn't this from the same country where they're having to impose laws on certain forms/amounts of micro-transactions in a day?

 

[NightHawk21]

It won't last. People eventually get tired of it and then they move on to something else.

Ya but by then the developers will be set for life multiple times over.

Now is the perfect time for them to just dissolve the company and run away with whatever they've made.

Agreed. I might wait for growth to just slow down a little or steady out then sell

 

[RJ 17]

Like Peanut Butter and Chocolate, this is what happens when you take two of the worlds most addicting games (Pokemon and Bejeweled) and mix them together.

Seriously, whoever came up with this idea is the most dastardly and evil of the evil geniuses.

 

[1337mokro]

Because the mobile market is full of idiots that don't know that games like this are worth maybe 5$ on other platforms and will gladly fork over dozens of dollars just to get through the game easier and quicker?

We used to have cheat codes. That was to hard for the casual crowd though. They had to press buttons and stuff! Do you know how hard it was to enter those codes in sequence! Makes their brain hurt so much. So they gladly fork over money to SKIP THROUGH the game rather than play it.

It's like what happened to Transformers all over. It made money. By lobotomizing itself and then whoring on the street.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

I'm sorry, I was a little too busy trying to find this game and missed the point of the article? Seriously, a game company has made what sounds like a fantastic game and people are upset that they're making money off of it? Yeah, some companies abuse the hell out of microtransactions, but that doesn't sound like it's happening here. If people want to spend more money to get more out of an otherwise good game, I don't see a problem.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

It won't last. People eventually get tired of it and then they move on to something else.

The current form of it might not last, but I don't see microtransactions in general going anywhere. After all, they're hardly new. Collectable soccer cards? Magic The Gathering? Pokemon? Microtransactions have been making millions for at least as long as I've been on this particular plane of existence.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, the actual rub is that if you look at that game it's objectively crap, it just happens to be a piece of shovelware that lucked into hitting it big. You could develop hundreds of games like that for the price of 1 AAA title and only need to succeed a couple of times to make it profitable. That's why I think companies are flocking to this paticular platform, especially when they spend tens of millions on turds and take a bath.

I understand it from a business perspective, and it is not good for gaming as a whole.

That said, I do not think AAA gaming will go away entirely, since there is still a market for it, but I do suspect we'll see less and less titles for a while at least.

 

[VanQ]

Yep. There's also the fact that iDOLM@STER and its subsidiaries, all games about raising cute girls to be top idols, is making cash hand over fist as well. 1 billion yen a month might not be nearly as much as 6 billion but when you consider that that's revenue it's still mighty impressive.

Oh and the 15 CDs that were released, all for characters in the game that had never had voices previously and that were singles with only a single song and a 5 minute drama track all made it into the Oricon top 10 for their first weeks on the market.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com.au/news/2013-02-17/nikkei/idolm@ster-tie-ins-earn-10-billion+yen

Now if you'll excuse me, my usual site just got stock of WebMoney and I need to buy some gacha rolls in Cinderella Girls.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Well, the actual rub is that if you look at that game it's objectively crap, it just happens to be a piece of shovelware that lucked into hitting it big. You could develop hundreds of games like that for the price of 1 AAA title and only need to succeed a couple of times to make it profitable. That's why I think companies are flocking to this paticular platform, especially when they spend tens of millions on turds and take a bath.

I understand it from a business perspective, and it is not good for gaming as a whole.

That said, I do not think AAA gaming will go away entirely, since there is still a market for it, but I do suspect we'll see less and less titles for a while at least.

Not sure how you define "objectively crap", personally I define it as buggy to the point of being unplayable. This looks at least functional, not deep or very interesting but functional.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, the actual rub is that if you look at that game it's objectively crap, it just happens to be a piece of shovelware that lucked into hitting it big. You could develop hundreds of games like that for the price of 1 AAA title and only need to succeed a couple of times to make it profitable. That's why I think companies are flocking to this paticular platform, especially when they spend tens of millions on turds and take a bath.

I understand it from a business perspective, and it is not good for gaming as a whole.

That said, I do not think AAA gaming will go away entirely, since there is still a market for it, but I do suspect we'll see less and less titles for a while at least.

Not sure how you define "objectively crap", personally I define it as buggy to the point of being unplayable. This looks at least functional, not deep or very interesting but functional.

In this case by comparing it to other well received AAA level shooters in terms of visuals, FX, presentation, etc... In which case it falls far short of the bar, never mind raising that bar as it promised to do. Some people digging around in the code trying to find ways improve the game, found that the basic code doesn't even take advantage of cards and technology newer than five years ago, which does a lot to explain why the game looks like it does, especially compared to the demos which apparently exploited current technology and innovations as were promised.

Now granted, if you were to compare this game to say a bunch of indie productions using 5 year old technology, then it wouldn't seem as bad. If they were charging $10 or maybe #20 for what was being presented as a fly by night effort by fans, that would be one thing... but in this case they didn't, it's presented as a AAA game, charging AAA prices. Hence why it can be considered objectively terrible, and is getting hammered so hard beyond the lies told about it.

 

[-Dragmire-]

Well, the actual rub is that if you look at that game it's objectively crap, it just happens to be a piece of shovelware that lucked into hitting it big. You could develop hundreds of games like that for the price of 1 AAA title and only need to succeed a couple of times to make it profitable. That's why I think companies are flocking to this paticular platform, especially when they spend tens of millions on turds and take a bath.

I understand it from a business perspective, and it is not good for gaming as a whole.

That said, I do not think AAA gaming will go away entirely, since there is still a market for it, but I do suspect we'll see less and less titles for a while at least.

Not sure how you define "objectively crap", personally I define it as buggy to the point of being unplayable. This looks at least functional, not deep or very interesting but functional.

In this case by comparing it to other well received AAA level shooters in terms of visuals, FX, presentation, etc... In which case it falls far short of the bar, never mind raising that bar as it promised to do. Some people digging around in the code trying to find ways improve the game, found that the basic code doesn't even take advantage of cards and technology newer than five years ago, which does a lot to explain why the game looks like it does, especially compared to the demos which apparently exploited current technology and innovations as were promised.

Now granted, if you were to compare this game to say a bunch of indie productions using 5 year old technology, then it wouldn't seem as bad. If they were charging $10 or maybe #20 for what was being presented as a fly by night effort by fans, that would be one thing... but in this case they didn't, it's presented as a AAA game, charging AAA prices. Hence why it can be considered objectively terrible, and is getting hammered so hard beyond the lies told about it.

Did I miss something? It says up top the game is free to play with a focus on microtransactions.

edit: I can't find any indication of them advertising the game as AAA competition on their site either.

source:http://www.gunghoonline.com/games/puzzle-dragons/

 

[fwiffo]

Its amazing how the arcade business model still works in Japan, and other Asian countries. Dungeon Fighter has a similar style of microtransactions for arcade style "credits". It will be interesting to see if this game can catch on at all in the west, or will people just stick with bejeweled.

 

[Abomination]

I am depressed this kind of "arcade" game is making this much money for so little effort on the developer's part.

This game wasn't designed by game designers, it looks like a social scientist and a addictive substance expert got together and found how to use social media to make money.

My concern is more and more developers will try and replicate this exact formula.

 

[Olas]

It's the free market at work, for better or for worse. Nobody's getting lied to or mislead. Humanity just sucks.