Japan is a notoriously difficult market for foreign game makers. So how did EA Mobile make Apex Legends Mobile grow?
Japan is a notoriously difficult market for foreign game makers. So how did EA Mobile make Apex Legends Mobile grow?
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Recently, data.ai and GameMakers teamed up to analyze how Apex Legends Mobile could succeed in Japan in 2022. Apex Legends is a battle royale game, developed by Respawn Entertainment and distributed by EA. The game was originally released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in February 2019 then launched a mobile version recently. The game requires players to choose from a range of characters to form teams of two to three players. Teams then approach an island and begin fighting each other.
Detailed statistics about the game.
According to EA, Apex Legends surpassed $2 billion in PC and console sales on March 31, 2022, since its February 2019 release, following the success on both platforms, EA has decided to roll it out. released the mobile version of Apex Legends on May 17, 2022. Immediately, the game had 15 million people pre-registered the game.
Although Apex Legends was only released in May, the game remained at the top in Japan for up to 54 weeks in the battle royale series. One of the reasons for the resounding success of Apex Legends Mobile is the genre that attracts players. According to data.ai data, battle royale has exploded since 2018, with games like Fortnite, PUBG, Free Fire and Knives Out, among others.
In fact, of the 153 RPG subgenres tracked by data.ai Game IQ, it’s 19th (as of the first half of 2022) with 329 million cumulative downloads (up from last year). 2021 to 221 million) and users spend nearly $1.9 billion.
The most successful game in Japan.
When analyzing the success of Apex Legend, we need to pay attention to the game features (from PC / console to mobile versions). Joseph Kim, CEO of LILA Games & GameMakers, said: “Apex Legends Mobile has good balance and offers great gunfight. Many design options for optimized mobile version.Example: simple auto loot system, target assist adjustment, optimization to help support low end devices, training mode science practice”.
More importantly, the game prioritizes the advancement of players on mobile over the high skill limits and competitive gameplay compared to the previous two versions, according to Kim. Also, the addition of TPP along with FPP (not in the PC game version) is clearly intended to help mobile players migrate from other mobile games to mobile Apex Legend. Finally, the optimization for low-end devices is well done, it can take a lot of work to develop a game using Unreal Engine.
In general, mobile players liked the improvement of the mobile version so the game was more successful in Japan. So, sales of Apex Legends Mobile also improved. Part of Apex Legend’s success is due to the opening of the Japanese market. Based on the game’s capabilities, data.ai deciphers how Apex Legends successfully broke into the Japanese market.
When releasing the game in Japan, EA tries to focus on developing a release strategy. Japan’s population ranks only 11th in the world, but data.ai data shows that in the first half of 2022, Japan is the world’s third largest mobile game market, with user spending over 6, 7 billion USD. Although the Japanese game market is huge, it is also quite isolated because the rankings always show local games.
