Japan’s most successful mobile game is picking up steam in the US market

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Earlier in the week we wrote that the cross-promotional collaboration between Clash of Clans and Puzzle & Dragons had proven fruitful for Finnish developer Supercell, as their CoC game became the top ranked free app in Japan on Monday. Since then the app has remained in the top spot, and it will be interesting to see how long it can stay there.

But has the cross-promotion helped Puzzle & Dragons in its effort to win over the US market? P&D also saw a big jump on Monday, and since then it has been hovering in the top 20 overall apps in the US app store. Of course, the more important metric is how it places in the top grossing charts, and that’s gradually on the rise as well (see chart below).

Thanks primarily to its huge fan base in its home market in Japan, GungHo’s Puzzle & Dragons already has over 15 million downloads under its belt. But its position at or near the top of Japan’s top grossing charts (since February 2012 for iOS, and since October 2012 on Google Play [1]) makes it the most successful mobile game of all time — not just in Japan, but anywhere.

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Puzzle & Dragons moving up in top grossing ranks in US (App Annie)

I think that even before the Clash of Clans cross promotion, P&D already had a decent fan base in Japan, as the official Facebook page has more than 32,000 fans. There is also an unofficial Puzzle & Dragons database, an active chat forum, and a useful sub-Reddit.

And as I explained before, I’m still pretty hooked on the game myself. If you haven’t tried Puzzle & Dragons, check out our demo video that shows the basics of gameplay.


  1. The app was released in mid-September 2012 on Google Play, and sharply rose to the top of the grossing rankings by October 10.  ↩