Top 50 Developers of 2015: #2 GungHo Online

so the number two company on our top 50 developers list for 2015 is gungho Online Entertainment from Japan um everyone should know at least that gungho is all about Puzzle and Dragons so puzzle dragons is um has been for the last couple of years the top grossing uh smartphone game in Japan it could be argued it actually created the smartphone uh gaming Market in in Japan really up to that point there had been a lot of kind of browser based games that run on feature phones um but if you just look at the kind of the the top grossing nature of puzz and Dragons um from 2013 into 2014 and still in 2015 it is just a phenomenon in that market and the Japanese Market is the most lucrative mobile games Market in the world at the moment maybe China will overtake it at some point but at the moment Japan is the place to be number one so for 2014

Puzzle and Dragons was the top grossing game in Japan for most of the year one point in the year it was in fact taking 50% of the entire um spend within the Japanese smartphone games market so so um half of every Yen being spent in Japan was going into that one game I mean it's just an absolute phenomenon in that market you know it's much more dominant even than than the Clash of Clans would be in in the western markets um but it has been kind of uh as as you expect within any number one comes under pressure from from from other kind of challeng es so for summer 2014 puzzle dragons was being challenged by uh puzzle RPG um but it kind of pretty much kind of managed to kind of hold its number one spot um and kind of kind of take uh kind of uh the puzzle RPG as the number two spot so there's kind of a good bit of kind of competition for for most of the Year between those two games and um what Puzzle and Dragons is is massive in Japan they have actually been quite successful outside of Japan so even in the US they've had they've had um you know 5 million downloads Western Europe um a few million downloads and in

the rest of Southeast Asia um in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong that game um has also done very well and been very successful so it's not purely Japanese kind of Market whereas some of the Japanese games so say like puzzle RPG is purely a Japanese phenomenon so the good thing for gungho is they've kind of proven that they've had one big success in a big market and they can kind of spread that success around um one interesting kind of um situation was at the end of 2014 um gangho did a deal with 10cent to release Puzzle and Dragons into the Chinese market for the first time um be interesting to see how that game does because um because puzzle dragons has been so successful and the Chinese uh developers are so quick at kind of spotting success and there's been quite a lot of games that that basically um use the same mechanics as puzzle and dragons and some of those have been very successful so actually for much of 2013 and 14 that there was a um some of the top grossing Chinese games have basically been versions of puzzle dragons with different kind of characters and artwork um so I guess um strategic it's kind of been interesting

for gangho now in 2015 that you know there's kind of an argument about whether you kind of reach with these big Gams whether you reach kind of a peak audience or Peak um kind of Revenue stream and we've seen this with guess a little bit with kind of Clash of Clans and and Candy Crush these kind of games you know how big how big can these big games get um certainly gangho are pretty gungho about the fact they can still grow the market because in terms of actual downloads it's not very many it's about 40 million downloads that puzzle and dragons has had globally so obviously that's very small compared to something like um Candy obviously they appeal to very different audiences puzzle dragons is is fairly Japanese and fairly hardcore for most people certainly in the west um to to appeal so what's kind of um we're seeing with these with these kind of massive games um that are very uh kind of lucrative is we kind of see companies looking to see how they can kind of focus that um success in different areas so actually gungho which is actually I mean mobile games terms of head actually a very small part of its business so it owns um kind of three or four um devel Studios that make console games so the

most famous mov is grasshopper but also has companies like air um game art people like that so it does do console games as well as mobile games um so it's kind of looking to had done had some crossover success with taking puzle dragons particularly in Japan to the 3DS um so there's been a couple of releases of of 3DS um versions of puzzle dragons and done pretty well okay and and equally it's such a big Phenom in Japan they actually have started to get this level where they're having like puzzle Dragon theme parks and puzzle and dragon conventions it's got to that kind of like Angry Birds type type situation so it's kind of interesting opportunities I think they have to kind of break out that brand I guess the the not necessarily the woring thing but one thing gangho hasn't managed to do is kind of have another kind of secondary hit so that's becoming increasingly hard to do in the market because which makes kind of um supercell with its three top grossing games almost unique I mean it's just very hard to to get multiple games at that scale um and gangho I mean it's released some kind of interesting games I guess the most interesting one that was bit more F maybe focused on the Western Market was um slingshot

Braves um and that was um I mean you know for other companies that may have been a success but compared to p on dragons obviously was nothing like that experience so the other interesting thing that gangho is doing um because it's generating so much money now um from a obviously a billion dollar franchise um just generates a lot of lot of free cash so it's starting to invest and I guess that's the the future of the company will be interesting for 2015 to see how those Investments play out so um talking about China it's um taken an investment in chuk Kong which is one of the big Chinese publisher Developers and Tall companies so it's taking a small stake in that to give it better access to the Chinese market and obviously we all know the Chinese market is will at some point be the biggest mobile games Market in the world just purely by the fact that China is so much bigger than everywhere else in terms of population and they love mobile phones um the other kind of I guess more um strategic um Investments that uh gungho has done made investment into US company called camcord and camcord it's a fairly small startup but it does um video um the video playback of of gameplay so

it's kind of like a social sharing type thing so you can play a game and capture the the the gameplay video on your on your phone Android or or iOS and then kind of share it in a kind of a like a YouTube type type approach so that's kind of an interesting play I guess for companies that are looking to to kind of find kind of social networks and find um kind of fans of games and kind of grow grow audiences and and in a similar vein but a much bigger investment was um company called playphone which is a us-based company that kind of ran its own social kind of Community Network some monetization stuff as well in there so own a bit like a kind of I guess a mobile phone kind of Facebook type type thing and it worked very closely with um with like US carriers so signed up with all the US carries and some of the big um carriers in Latin America and some of the big carriers in Southeast Asia as well so um what they do is they do like a white label um kind of storefront which basically means kind of other companies can brand it um but but play

phone runs all the kind of infrastructure backend stuff and so it acts like a like a storefront so like basically an equivalent of Google play with kind of Facebook built into it and um gangho has basically effectively bought that company it has a majority stake in it um so that's kind of quite an interesting deal to see um whether gangho wants to do that to push it its games in there or whether gangho wants to kind of become a bit more of an infrastructure company um and obviously the reach of Puzzle and Dragons allows it to do that in in quite an interesting manner so so I guess the kind of um interesting thing for for 2015 for for gangho to see where it ends up on 2016's list is you know does it have more successful games or does it kind of broaden its approach a little bit does it become a bit more rounded in terms of infrastructure and mobile gaming so that's what we'll be looking for um in 2015