A lot has been written and said about how hit-driven the mobile game business has become over the last few years, but if the industry needed another bit of evidence, here it is: the market cap of Mixi (2121), Japan’s once biggest social network, has eclipsed that of Mobage operator DeNA (2432) today.
As I laid out earlier this year, Mixi was essentially considered dead in the water, after having fought (and lost) to other social services like Facebook, Twitter or Line in recent years. It is not an overstatement to say the company was just a shadow of it former self.
But in the fall of 2013, Monster Strike came and brought Mixi back on the map: a single mobile game, released only in Japan (at that time).
The game started doing really well around the end of last year, Mixi’s stock rose, but investors and others remained skeptical about the long-term success.
Fast forward to today, and the picture is much clearer, at least when you believe the stock market: Mixi shares went up 9.57% today, boosting the market cap to a whopping US$1.99 billion.
This Bloomberg chart shows how Mixi’s stock price increased in the last 4 weeks:
Monster Strike Has Made Mixi Relevant Again
The background is that Monster Strike has been sitting at the No. 2 position behind Puzzle & Dragons from GungHo Online Entertainment (3765) for the last weeks, on the top grossing rankings on both iOS and Android in Japan. Investors are seeing this as a positive sign for the title’s lifecycle.
In fact, Monster Strike managed to even take over the top position (on the iPhone) from Puzzle & Dragons twice in the last 2 weeks (additional background).
It was also released on the App Store in Taiwan, where it now entered the top 10 in the grossing ranking. Monster Strike is also expected to be released in China soon (via Tencent).
While the performance of Monster Strike is astonishing by itself, it also means that Mixi’s market cap is now higher than that of DeNA, which stood at US$1.97 billion today: and again, it’s all because of Monster Strike – nothing else.
Japanese news site Social Game Info prepared this chart that shows how the market caps of Mixi and DeNA evolved over the last months:
The problem DeNA has is that all of its native smartphone games have flopped so far – something the Mobage operator shares with long-time competitor GREE (3632), whose market cap stands at US$2.2 billion currently.
My own prediction is that this still not it for Monster Strike and that the game is going to continue well, both in Japan and abroad.
Again, please click here for a quick background of the success Mixi has found with Monster Strike.
