Chinese video game developer Hypergryph released their 3D action RPG Arknights: Endfield on January 22 for PC, PS5, and mobile. While the game has shown high popularity in the first month since launch both domestically and globally, with China taking the lead in overall mobile downloads, recent research points that Japan is actually the biggest gacha spender on the platform (Source: Otaku Soken).
According to data compiled by Sensor Tower from January 22 to February 21, the Chinese market accounted for 25% of mobile downloads for Endfield, coming out as the region with the overall biggest download share. Just after China, the Japanese market came second with 13% of overall mobile downloads, followed by Korea (9%), United States (8%) and Russia (5%).
On the other hand, when it comes to revenue, data suggests that, despite having the most overall downloads, the biggest market for Arknights: Endfield is actually not China. Apparently, Japan accounted for 32% of overall revenue, surpassing China at 27%. Among all regions where Endfield is available, Japan also has the strongest revenue-per-download rate, at approximately $15 USD per download.
Coincidentally, Japan also ranks highly when it comes to player population for Endfield’s PlayStation 5 port, being the second most populous market in the world (15%), right behind the US.
On a related note, Japan managing to top the Chinese market in terms of revenue is likely related to the general spending habits of Japanese mobile gamers. According to a report published by Sensor Tower in September last year, Japan has an “exceptionally high” average revenue per user (ARPU), meaning Japanese players show a greater willingness to spend significant amounts on in-game purchases compared to players based in other regions. When it comes to Japanese mobile games specifically, more than 80% of downloads come from overseas, while Japanese users are still responsible for 70% of the overall revenue.
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On a related note, PSO2 was available in Japan for 9 years (JUST short of 10 years) before the global release, according to Sega the global version players (it was still limited to the US, UK and a handful of European countries at the time, expanded to more countries much later) spent more money in 3 months than the Japanese players had spent over the entire 10 years.
So it’s not an industry trend that the Japanese players spend more on microtransactions/gachas, but rather they spend more on specific types and far less on others.
In the case of endfield the gacha is a character draw thst directly affects gameplay. (unlocks new characters/equipment with new skills/etc.)
While the pso2 gacha is purely cosmetics and has no effect at all on gameplay.
What I find odd about this is that it was done via survey. An odd way to conduct research on spending and overall revenue per country. I’m wondering what kind of questions were on that survey and how they determined how much each user spent.
I’m sure the Endfield devs have the numbers. When it make more sense just to get those from them rather than conduct surveys on users?