Nintendo might have hit the jackpot with the amazing debut of Pokemon Go this year. However, Sony, on its home turf, has silently dispatched its competitor with the popular mobile game Fate/Grand Order, reports Bloomberg. The game is based on the anime TV series Fate.
Fate/Grand Order well ahead of Pokemon Go in Japan
Sony’s game lets players travel back in time and team up with historical figures like Joan of Arc, Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, etc. to save humanity from looming disasters. The basic version of the mobile game is free to play, but players can buy tokens that make it easier to add characters and speed up gameplay.
In Japan, Fate/Grand Order has been near or at the top of the app revenue rankings all year. Since its July 2015 debut, the mobile game has been downloaded more than 7 million times, notes Bloomberg. According to research firm App Annie, amongAndroid users, the game has made more money than Pokemon Go in 104 out of 133 days this year and in 51 days among iOS users.
Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. in Tokyo, said the mobile game is above Pokemon Go in terms of the amount of money users are spending. Thong added that the engagement level and intensity for Fate/Grand Order is much higher.
Last month when Sony reported its latest quarterly figures, CFO Kenichiro Yoshida talked about the game, saying, “It continues to positively contribute to the music division, where it is based.”
The mobile game lifted Sony Music’s operating profit by 23%, says Bloomberg.
Pokemon Go losing popularity
Meanwhile, Pokemon Go continues to lose its popularity. According to the analyst firm Mobile Action, the U.K. numbers of daily users playing the location-based game on iPhones has dropped from a peak of 1.7 million to around 53,000. This reflects a global trend that has seen the augmented-reality-based game lose more than 15 million users since its release in July, says the DailyStar.
Pokemon Go lets player hunt Pokemon by using their phone’s GPS. After its release, the mobile game was very popular, with many players roaming their communities to catch Pokemon. According to one poll, at its height, mostly 18- to 24-year-olds played the mobile game for nearly an hour a day. The location-based app was crowned the biggest mobile game of 2016 by Google.
