As Angry Birds x Puzzle & Dragons collab goes live, will Japan warm to Rovio?

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We previously told you that Japanese gaming giant GungHo Online Entertainment would be working with Rovio’s iconic Angry Birds on a Puzzle & Dragons collaboration. The results of that collaboration just went live in the P&D app today, as a special in game event showcasing a special ‘Piggy Island’ dungeon.

As you can see in our video above, the special level includes most of the same Angry Birds characters that many of us know so well. For me, the most interesting part of how this was presented was that the Angry Birds theme music is featured in the collaboration. It was a pleasant surprise [1].

Of course it’s Rovio’s hope that by featuring their feathered friends inside Japan’s most popular mobile game, that they can get a little more exposure to the lucrative Japanese mobile games market. So far it looks to be working, and as I write this Angry Birds is ranked 69th overall in the Japanese iOS app store. It was ranked 432nd the same time yesterday (see picture below)[2]. Typically these collaborations result in a rather temporary spike in this way. But for Rovio, I expect they’ll be quite happy to find another channel through which to connect with fans in Japan.

The Finnish company appears to have found Japan relatively difficult to crack in comparison to other markets, with so many other strong character brands to go up against. Although when we spoke with Rovio representatives earlier in the year, they emphasized that they wanted to take things slow. Japan is a hard nut to crack, but this is a good step.

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Source: App Annie

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  1. As with past P&D collaborations (see Batman: Arkham Origins), Clash of Clans), players can collect special themed monsters to power up and evolve. Some of these special monsters have been less than great in the past, but the Angry Birds characters I’ve collected so far (surprisingly) do not suck.  ↩

  2. For 9pm Japan time.  ↩