By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry

Puzzle & Dragons Maker GungHo Reaches US$15 Billion Market Cap – More Than Nintendo

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I’ll say it again: if there is one mobile game out there right now that people in Japan will remember in 10 years, it’s Puzzle & Dragons.

The game, which boasts 13 million registered users in this country (10% of the population), has generated US$113 million in sales in April.

Since late last year, maker GungHo’s market cap at the Osaka Stock Exchange kept rising and rising until – at about US$10 billion- making the company worth more than Mobage operator DeNA, GREE, and Zynga combined.

And today, GungHo shares (ticker: 3765) jumped limit-up by 300,000 yen to 1,342,000 yen (+28.8%) in just a few minutes of trading, until the stock was bid-only.

As a consequence, the company’s market cap now reached 1.54 trillion yen, which translates to US$15.1 billion. With this number, GungHo topped the market cap of US$1.53 trillion yen (or US$15.0 billion) Nintendo (7974) holds.

The US$15.1 billion market cap is also higher than that of Nikon, Fujitsu, Isuzu, Sanyo, All Nippon Airways, Sharp, or Mitsubishi Motors.

It’s a new world we live in.

Other market caps (Monday, May 13 at 11:30am JST):

  • GREE: US$2.8 billion
  • DeNA: US$3.6 billion
  • Zynga at US$2.6 billion
  • Electronic Arts: US$6.7 billion
  • Activision Blizzard: US$16.7 billion

GungHo’s new owner SoftBank can be very happy.

About the author

Dr. Serkan Toto

I am the CEO & Founder of Kantan Games Inc., an independent consultancy focused on Japan’s game industry.

Please feel free to connect via Email (Serkan at kantangames.com), LinkedIn or Twitter.

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By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry