Buzz
This is where you truly see how the Genshin Impact community is thriving day by day.
Twitter, being a global social media platform, recently released its rankings for 2021. In the gaming category, here are the top 5 mentioned titles:
Genshin Impact
Ensemble Stars!
Fate/Grand Order
KNIVES OUT
Project Sekai
Among the 5 games, 4 are anime-style and 2 are music-themed. This article will briefly analyze 3 representative games chosen from the 5 aforementioned ones, studying their revenue, downloads, and advertising to understand why they are so popular.
Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is an open-world adventure game developed by the Chinese developer MiHoYo, released in 2020. Since its release, the game has attracted a large player base worldwide due to its quality and comprehensive approach.
The publisher has invested heavily in advertising Genshin Impact. According to data published by SocialPeta, the game has had over 20,000 ads on iOS and Android distributed as of 09/02/2022. Based on last year's advertising data, Genshin Impact's favorite advertising platforms are Facebook (on iOS) and Google Ads (on Android).
Advertisements mainly come in the form of videos and images. Video ads revolve around showcasing characters, gameplay, and highlighting the game's beautiful graphics. Image ads mainly display information about rewards, festivals, and events in the game, along with character illustrations.
Let's watch a video advertisement below. It is distributed in Russia and mainly focuses on 'Elemental Reactions,' a gameplay mode in the game. For example, after using 'Mona' to use the Water Elemental skill on enemies, switch to Chongyun to continue using the freezing skill to freeze enemies. There's a formula at the end of the video for each 'Elemental Reactions', guiding users on how to play the game. Currently, the advertisement has a popularity rating of 974 (with the highest popularity rating being 999), 2.8 million impressions, and 1300 conversions.
The advertisement below was released on 09/02/2022, showcasing the game's features, gameplay across different platforms, in-game privileges, and being voiced over by a famous person in the livestream, which can increase user conversion rates from his fan base.
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More than a year since its release, Genshin Impact continues to maintain a high growth rate. According to SocialPeta, in January 2022, the game garnered over 4.7 million downloads on iOS and Android, recording over 7.5 million MAU; it also earned over 9.3 million USD in revenue on both iOS and Android platforms, indicating the game's potential for significant revenue generation.
Ensemble Stars
Training idols is a longstanding cultural feature in Japan, where real-life idol groups like AKB48 and Johnny's have flourished. However, it wasn't until Love Live, a 2.5D idol school project launched in 2010, that virtual idols finally found success in Japan. Subsequently, the Love Live! School Idol Festival music game series was released, reaching over 1 million players within 5 months. With such impressive figures, the idol training wave swept the mobile gaming market. Most notably, Ensemble Stars game stood out.
Ensemble Stars game primarily focuses on idol training. Instead of emphasizing traditionally handsome characters as seen in otome games and romantic relationships, this game showcases energetic, powerful boys or hardworking individuals with their own dreams. The theme of 'youth and striving spirit' has created a harmonious chord that touches players' hearts.
Below is one of the video advertisements for Ensemble Stars!! Music. In the video, we see scenes of girls singing (a very serene feeling) -> subway trains passing by and eyes looking down (a melancholic mood) -> idols shining and girls smiling (joyful). As emotions intensify, players feel emotionally connected with everyone.
SocialPeta Advertising Intelligence
According to data collected by SocialPeta, Ensemble Stars!! Music doesn't rely heavily on advertising. Instead, the game focuses on enhancing its IP (intellectual property). Numerous products, comics, music, novels, stage plays, and animations based on the IP are produced, always reaching users in many dimensions to ensure player loyalty.
After years of operation, Ensemble Stars!! Music has stood out from similar games and became the highest-grossing music game globally in 2021. The game also achieved remarkable milestones in January 2022, earning $7.8 million in revenue on the App Store and $1.7 million in revenue on Google Play
KNIVES OUT
KNIVES OUT is a battle royale shooting game similar to PUBG. The game was officially launched in 2017 with the main market being Japan. According to SocialPeta, over the past year, the game has mainly conducted advertising campaigns in Japan, accounting for about 77%, followed by the United States, accounting for about 18%.
KNIVES OUT allocates a significant portion of marketing resources to localize content, thus, their advertisements have been optimized to fit the tastes of the Japanese audience. The following advertisement, released in January 2022, is a video advertisement featuring action scenes performed by Japanese actors, without any scenes taken from the game. The footage is reminiscent of game show programs on TV, highly effective in bridging the gap between the game and the players.
SocialPeta Advertising Intelligence
Over the past month, KNIVES OUT has released numerous practical advertisements like this, accounting for over 57% of total advertisements. The game's advertisements have been carried out on various popular social media platforms in Japan such as Youtube, Twitter.
And KNIVES OUT has been very active in collaborating with other IPs, as well as teaming up with many animation studios. Recently, this game has produced a highly successful animated film, Tokyo Revengers
SocialPeta Advertising Intelligence
KNIVES OUT has become widely known in Japan through collaborations with other IPs and flashy advertisements, as well as the absence of similar games in Japan. As player growth slows down, the game still maintains very high revenue, earning over $18.7 million in revenue on the App Store and over $1.2 million in revenue on Google Play
Conclusion
The hottest mobile games on Twitter mentioned above resonate well with the local population in Japan in various aspects, from design to gameplay to advertising strategy. And Japan (followed by the United States) is the country with the most tweets, which has further fueled the game's popularity. If you're looking to quickly build a new game and make it a big hit in the market through social media, you may consider referencing the marketing strategies above.
