Mixi (2121) today announced that its action RPG “Monster Strike” has passed the 10 million downloads mark on iOS and Android on July 19.
The number includes users from Japan and Taiwan: in February, Mixi closed a deal with Tencent to distribute Monster Strike in China, but the game is still only available in two markets.
Monster Strike was launched in Japan in October last year and went on to become a massive success (click here for an in-depth background analysis).
In fact, Mixi’s market cap shot up to US$3.2 billion as of today, making the company worth more than the US$1.9 billion of GREE (3632) and Mobage operator DeNA (2432).
The company’s market cap is now also higher than that of CyberAgent (4751), which currently stands at US$2.6 billion. (Just to compare, Zynga’s market cap is at US$2.7 billion at the moment).
Monster Strike is a mini Puzzle & Dragons of sorts.
Monster Strike Is Occasionally Coming Close To Puzzle & Dragons
At the time of writing, Monster Strike is ranked at No. 2 in the grossing chart on Google Play in Japan (behind Puzzle & Dragons) and is currently even the highest grossing iPhone app in Japan, ahead of the GungHo Online Entertainment (3765) title.
The background here is that Mixi is currently celebrating the 10 million downloads milestone with an in-game event that started on Tuesday evening Japan time, just a few hours ago.
At the same time, Monster Strike users can battle against Godzilla under a special (and very clever) marketing collaboration that started on July 18 and runs through July 31:
So things should get “back to normal” relatively soon.
However, this isn’t the first time Monster Strike has topped Puzzle & Dragons in the Japanese grossing rankings, even though the Mixi title only boasts around a third of the number of downloads the GungHo app racked up so far.
There’s still a wide gap between Monster Strike and Puzzle & Dragons, but Mixi as a company has sure come a long, long way.
