Staying in the Top 20 Sales Rankings... 'Nahonrep' at 21st
Only 26.1% of Japanese Have Experience Using Korean Games
Korean games are struggling in the Japanese game market. As they are pushed out of the top sales rankings, Chinese games are taking their place.
According to Mobile Index, an application analysis company, as of the 28th, Korean games have fallen outside the top 20 in the Japanese Apple App Store sales rankings. Netmarble’s mobile game Solo Leveling: Arise ranked highest at 21st, followed by the same company’s The Seven Deadly Sins: Light and Darkness Battle at 22nd.
The top sales positions in the Japanese game market are occupied by Japanese or Chinese games. Games from Japanese companies such as Square Enix, Konami, GungHo Online Entertainment, and Bandai Namco Entertainment ranked from 1st to 5th, followed by Chinese game companies. Chinese game company First Fun, which ranks first in sales domestically, has Last War: Survival at 6th place, and Chinese Kuro Games, recognized for its artistic value in the subculture genre, has Mythos: Wuthering Wave at 8th. Additionally, Chinese game company JoinNiceGames, which sparked the idle game craze, has Mushroom Care at 9th place.
As Japanese and Chinese games solidify their positions, the presence of Korean games is gradually shrinking. Previously, Shift Up’s November 2022 release Goddess of Victory: NIKKE gained great popularity in Japan, ranking first in both popularity and sales, but its current sales rank has dropped to 47th.
The poor performance of Goddess of Victory has negatively affected Shift Up’s earnings. Shift Up is preparing for a listing on the KOSPI market, and according to the submitted securities report, Goddess of Victory accounts for about 97% of their sales, making it absolutely critical. Moreover, this game’s overseas sales are more than four times higher than domestic sales, with a particularly high dependence on Japanese sales. As sales of Goddess of Victory declined in Japan, Shift Up’s sales for the first quarter of this year were recorded at 37.4 billion KRW, a 16.8% decrease compared to the same period last year. The company attributed the first-quarter sales decline to the base effect from the initial launch period of Goddess of Victory in the previous year.
However, the Japanese game market is almost a barren land for domestic game companies compared to other countries. Although the market size exceeds 17 trillion KRW, the usage rate of Korean games is not high. This is because the influence of existing Japanese game companies is strong, and Chinese games have also emerged as powerful competitors.
According to the 2024 Overseas Hallyu Survey published by the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, only 26.1% of 1,000 Japanese respondents reported having used Korean games. This is the lowest figure among the 26 countries surveyed, meaning that 73.9% have never used Korean games. Furthermore, the proportion of those willing to spend money on Korean games was also low. In the survey on willingness to pay for Korean games, Japan’s rate of unwillingness to pay was 50.9%, the second highest among the 26 countries after Kazakhstan’s 57.1%.
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