Before 2021, Japan is the largest market for mobile games in China. Every year, Chinese game manufacturers can dig for more than $3 billion from the Japanese market.

However, the Japanese market has always been called “game island”, which has always been a contradiction between users’ preferences and strong consumption power. How to read Japanese users has long been the key to opening up the situation in the Japanese market. Outsiders may see flowers in the fog, but the Japanese themselves are different.

On February 28, crest ape music hall released a user survey, which investigated 800 Japanese players who had consumption behavior during 2021 from multiple indicators such as monthly krypton amount, daily average game use time, number of frequently played games, and percentage of game consumption in monthly income, so as to show the most real current situation of Japanese players on the front line as much as possible.

“People are stupid and have more money” doesn’t exist

Different from the imagined big r everywhere, the proportion of “whale users” among Japanese game players is not high, accounting for only 2% of all players. These players are reported to be called “core users”. Their krypton amount is more than 50000 yen (about 2700 yuan) per month.

Of course, there are individual players with more than 1 million yen (about 55000 yuan), but it is rare.

Although the name of “moderate users” has the meaning of “middle tier” and “most”, their proportion is not high, only 9%. These players spend between 10000 yen and 50000 yen (about 550-2700 yuan) on the game every month.

The number of “light users” is the largest, accounting for nearly 90%, and the general monthly consumption is less than 10000 yen. Of course, if you take a closer look, you will find that users with a monthly consumption of less than 10000 yen are more concentrated between 120 yen and 1000 yen (about 6.6 ~ 55 yuan).

Basically consistent with other regions, the consumption map of Japanese players who have always been rumored that “people are stupid and have more money” is also a typical pyramid structure: the number of players with low consumption is the most, and the higher the consumption is, the fewer the number of players is.

Per capita “liver emperor”

Although the wallet of Japanese players is not as big as expected, the liver of Japanese players is really good.

The survey shows that up to 36.8% of core users spend five hours on games every day, an increase of more than 20 percentage points, a leap from 11.1% in 2020. Moreover, few core users play less than one hour a day.

Moderate users are mainly concentrated in the stages of 2 hours (25.4%) and 3 hours (26.8%) a day, while mild users basically play games for 1 ~ 2 hours a day. This may also indicate that light users may not have time to play without spending money. As long as they can prolong the game time, light users may also change into medium and core users.

Crest ape music hall pointed out that the user’s game time increased significantly in 2021. The possible reasons are the convenience of mobile games, the increase in the number of products, and remote work under the epidemic, which makes it easier for people to spare time to fish and play games.

Resident 3 games are the upper limit

In terms of frequently playing games, among Japanese players, only hard core users are more fraternal, and 26.3% are resident in five games.

Moderate users and light users, and a large proportion of moderate users (23.9%) and light users (34.8%) only play one game. Such users can basically be regarded as loyal fans of a certain product, or are on the verge of loss. Once their beloved game is out of breath, they may not be interested in other products.

Among the three users, the number of players who often play more than 10 games is small. After all, people’s energy is limited. In particular, Japanese mobile games are also famous for their liver and krypton. Conversely, relatively casual liver protection products may be popular in the Japanese market.

Consumption downgrade is coming

The proportion of the money spent on the game in the income per month can show the player’s consumption intention. The bad news for game makers is that Japanese players are becoming more and more rational.

For example, in 2020, 22.2% of core users will pay 10-20% of their monthly income for games. By 2021, this figure has risen to 36.8%. Don’t be happy too early. The growth of this part of the number is actually obtained at the expense of the number of users who spend 20% 30% of their monthly income and 30% 40% of their monthly income.

Similarly, among moderate users, players willing to spend 20% 30% of their monthly income on game consumption doubled to 16.9% from 8.8% in 2020, but players willing to spend 30% 40% of their monthly income on game consumption plummeted from 10.2% to 1.4%.

Indeed, a small number of hard core users (3%) are very crazy and are willing to spend more than 70% of their monthly income on the game, but on the whole, Japanese players are actually gradually becoming rational and are no longer willing to give all their hands to krypton gold.

Paying for love is still the mainstream

The purpose of user krypton gold can guide the business model design of game manufacturers. In Japan, “wanting roles and equipment” is the absolute mainstream of krypton gold. 63.2% of core users, 80.3% of medium users and 63% of light users are for role krypton gold.

Interestingly, the proportion of core users who want to show off when “seals” is also increasing rapidly, and the growth rate has reached an outrageous 400%. This may indicate that the popularity and penetration of mobile games in Japan are deepening and can already serve as a social way.

Another abnormal data is that core users are less and less concerned about winning in PVP. On the contrary, the competitive heart of medium users begins to increase. 31% of medium users pay more and more attention to efficiency. In order to save game time, krypton players doubled from 22.1% in 2020 to 42.3% in 2021.

Welfare is too good, it is necessary to reduce consumption

For game manufacturers, the most painful thing is to have users but no income. There are various reasons for product death, but the data can at least tell you the cause of death.

The survey shows that there are two main reasons why Japanese players don’t krypton gold. One is that they can play without krypton gold. The other is that they want to observe. When the game is popular, or they think it’s very interesting and the operation won’t run away, they will krypton gold again.

Due to the current volume of mobile game industry, corresponding activities are frequently launched