Japanese gaming giant DeNA is enjoying the hard-earned success of its Mobage social gaming platform in the US, as two of its titles, Rage of Bahamut and Blood Brothers sit atop the list of Google Play’s top grossing apps, while a third, Marvel: War of Heroes, has cracked the top ten.
Rage of Bahamut actually reached the top of the charts back in April and has been up there since. Blood Brothers is gaining steam and has ranked as the top-grossing app in 22 country-specific Google Play stores, including Canada, France and Sweden. Both games are also available on iOS.
“Following the success of Rage of Bahamut, we are delighted to see Blood Brothers also gaining remarkable popularity in the U.S. and other countries,” Kenji Kobayashi, executive games director at DeNA, said in a statement celebrating the achievement. “In Japan, DeNA has accumulated extensive know-how on rapidly iterative game design, where we constantly and quickly incorporate user feedback to our games. We see Blood Brothers’ success as another solid proof point that the model works across borders, not just in Japan.”
We recently highlighted DeNA as one of a handful of Asian firms that are breaking their way into the US market, and the sustained success of its Mobage games on application stores in the US is evidence to that end. Rival gaming platform GREE is also doing well in the US market, bringing in almost $17 million in revenue there in the second quarter, largely off the strength of its $210 million acquistion of game developer Funzio earlier this year.
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Rage of Bahamut is actually developed by Cygames, but it’s listed as published by Mobage on Google Play. DeNA recently purchased a 20 percent stake in Cygames for $92.4 million in order to strengthen their existing relationship. The company is steadily amassing an impressive stable of game publishers. In 2010, it bought up Ngmoco in a deal worth as much as $400 million.
Top grossing apps are translating into record-breaking profits for DeNA. The company reported $254 million in income off $624 million in revenue during the third quarter.
Even with its success overseas, the company is isn’t overlooking its native Japan. It recently inked a deal with Yahoo Japan to add new features to their Yahoo Mobage collaboration. That agreement came less than a day after GREE announced its own partnership with Yahoo Japan.
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