Sensor Tower: IP Collaborations in the Japanese Mobile Market in 2023
Cooperation with other brands brings additional downloads; revenue, and builds a connection with the local audience.
Major games in the Japanese market actively engage in IP collaborations. For example, Monster Strike alone had more than 25 collaborations in 2023.
Since 2014, Monster Strike has celebrated its birthdays together with other brands. The graph shows how such collaborations are reflected in downloads.
Japanese games mainly collaborate with anime. Popular IPs include Chainsaw Man, Attack on Titan, and Evangelion.
The Battle Cats from PONOS Studio has been actively collaborating with IPs since its release in November 2012. This helps the game steadily increase its MAU (Monthly Active Users) - in the fourth quarter of 2023, the game reached 4.8 million MAU in Japan alone.
IP collaborations help foreign games earn more in the Japanese market. In particular, Sensor Tower cites examples like Knives Out and Identity V from NetEase.