Japan’s top smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons hit 29 million downloads, maker GungHo Online Entertainment (3765) announced today.
The number was reached inside Japan only (on iOS, Android, and Amazon Kindle).
What’s interesting to note here is that the growth rate, the time it takes Puzzle & Dragons to add one million users, is slowing down.
A total of 42 days were needed to get from 28 to 29 million users – the last time it took the game longer than that was in October 2012, just before TV advertising began.
Just for context, it took Puzzle & Dragons:
- 22 days to get from 25 to 26 million downloads
- 28 days to get from 26 to 27 million downloads
- 37 days to get from 27 to 28 million downloads
However, this trend isn’t surprising, given the penetration rate Puzzle & Dragons is boasting in Japan.
(The slow down would have been even worse if Puzzle & Dragons didn’t enter two collaborations in Japan last month, with popular animated TV series Dragon Ball Kai and animated movie Saint Seiya: Legend of Sanctuary.)
Reset With “Puzzle & Dragons W”
GungHo thought about a counter-measure to the slow down in the numbers of downloads months ago, when the company announced “Puzzle & Dragons W” back in February.
Puzzle & Dragons W (pronounced: “Puzzle & Dragons Double”, as “W” stands for double in Japan) is not a new, separate title but an update of the existing one.
Under the so-called “one app – two games” concept, users can play the original Puzzle & Dragons next to a variation, which is actually named “Puzzle & Dragons W”.
While no major changes are expected for the original game for now, the W version will offer a new experience: it’s based on Puzzle & Dragons proper, but it’s more casual, more puzzle- (and less RPG)-oriented, and easier to pick up. Character-wise, the cute, so-called Tama-Dora monsters are front and center, instead of the dragons and other creatures of the original games:
The goal is clear: with Puzzle & Dragons W, GungHo is trying to broaden the appeal of the app, to get in new users and reactivate existing ones that found the original game too complicated.
Puzzle & Dragons W was supposed to go live this Thursday in Japan: however, in order to ensure quality, GungHo decided to release the update on July 29 instead.
This is a wise decision, as Puzzle & Dragons W will be the – by far – most radical change the game has seen so far.
The update will hit Japan first, with GungHo not having said a word about a possible international roll-out so far.
