Why ” Wilderness Action ” can become the national hand game in Japan?
Why ” Wilderness Action ” can become the national hand game in Japan?
When it comes to PUBG games, the first thing that comes to mind must be the long dominance of “Peace Elite” in the Chinese handheld game market and the global popularity of its overseas version “PUBG mobile”. App Store optimization is the best not to be missed method to rank top at competitive app store. And our best app ranking service can help you get more app downloads. Never miss asobooster.com if you want to get more benefits in mobile app marketing!
But what you may not know is that there is such a game, which was a huge hit when it was launched in China, and just a few days after it was launched, it got the first place in the free list of APP Store, and its publisher NetEase also ate a big piece of cake in the Chinese tactical competitive hand game field with the success of this game. This is – “Wilderness Action
However, the good times did not last long, with the intensification of Chinese tactical competitive hand game competition, “wilderness action” is deep in the quagmire, version iterations everywhere suffer from the clamp, performance continues to decline, and was soon overtaken by the two games of Tencent.
However, “Wilderness Action”, which lost in the Chinese handheld game market, did not disappear under this circumstance, but went overseas and found its foothold in the Japanese market, which is known as the “game island”.
The game has found a foothold in the Japanese market, which is known as the “game island”. In today’s view, the success of “Wilderness Action” in the Japanese market is mainly due to three key factors.
One of them is to take the first opportunity to enter the first place. It turns out that “Wilderness Action” has a long history of globalization, and for the Japanese market, it not only designed a Japanese version long ago, but also set up a separate server, and went online in the Japanese application market less than two weeks after the national service went online. In contrast, Tencent has put its main effort into the Chinese market, and has launched two hand games of the same type to stir up the Chinese tactical competitive hand game market into a red sea. Thanks to this, “Wilderness Action” gained a valuable head start in the Japanese market. Until May 2018, when KRAFTON’s “PUBG Mobile” was launched, “Wilderness Action” had already continued to dominate the list and penetrated the hearts of Japanese users.
Secondly, it is thanks to the development of the Japanese market itself. As one of the countries with the most popular game culture and the most mature game industry, the high penetration rate of handheld games has the phenomenon of serious solidification of head products and categories. This is reflected in the fact that a few popular games have been ruling the best-seller list for a long time, such as “Monster Marbles”, a game launched in 2013 with simple gameplay, which is still a regular in the top three of the best-seller list.
But through this phenomenon, but more practitioners see the huge potential opportunities of the Japanese market behind it – once a breakthrough emerges, it will reap a huge reward.
Finally, it’s time to talk about the key to breaking the game. NetEase’s operation model may be the successful experience that many overseas hand game and even overseas application manufacturers should go to study carefully.
The wilderness action can successfully enter the Japanese market, and even become a national game in Japan, without its localized operation of the product and the continuous depth of the user psychology.
From the aspect of publicity, in response to Japanese users’ preference for trusting private information flow, “Wilderness Action” avoided the mainstream promotion methods such as TV commercials at the early stage, but focused on Youtube community and UGC content, such as inviting vtuber and e-sports players to play against each other on the anniversary day, and inviting famous musician Hiroyuki Sawano to compose the theme song “Never stop”, etc., which has a high effective reach. The effective touch rate is extremely high. The game is also frequently linked with popular Japanese IPs to tap more users, such as the popular “Silver Soul” and “Attack of the Giants” in the anime circle, so it can reach a “national” popularity rate in terms of publicity.
From the operation aspect, “Wilderness Action” is solidly taking the “mass route”, in addition to IP linkage, KOL and other marketing activities held frequently, anniversary celebrations, various parties are also through the online and offline linkage into the hearts of Japanese users, the song “Duel in Tokyo The popularity of the game can be illustrated by the popularity of the song “Duel in Tokyo”, which also reflects the importance of the manufacturer’s attention to users.
As for the product, in addition to the language adaptation and separate server, a map of Tokyo in the game developed separately for the Japanese market also shows the sincerity. In addition, the rules of the game itself have been localized and optimized to meet the needs of Japanese players, and the in-game community has been optimized to meet part of the social needs. It can be said that the iteration step by step to localization is the main.
The success of “Wilderness Action” in the Japanese market brought significant revenue growth to its publisher NetEase in the third quarter of the year – up 71% compared to Q1 of the same year. To this day, it is still one of the top 10 or even top 5 best-selling games in Japan. Its success is for Chinese manufacturers to provide a successful experience on the road to the sea. Product export for overseas market research may wish to consider a few more data dimensions, more consideration of localization of research. Replace the cold product output with cultural output to blossom in overseas markets.