Another one of the top games out of Japan is teaming up with a Western developer for exposure.
Line Rangers has topped 23 million downloads worldwide, and now it’s using Rovio’s characters to bring in even more players. Rovio and Line, the Japanese developer responsible for the incredibly popular chat app, started the promotional event earlier this week. It has the various grumpy fowl making surprise appearances in Line Rangers tower-defense levels. The obvious goal is to raise Line Rangers’ profile with players in Western markets — and further break into a global market that’s on pace to top $20 billion in 2014.
Line Rangers is a top-performing game in Japan and other Asian regions. It is the 31st highest-grossing app in Japan, and it is No. 8 in Thailand. But it doesn’t even register in important markets like the U.K. and the U.S.
While Japan is the top spending market worldwide for mobile games, successful developers in that nation are still looking to the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. to add to their bottom lines. Few games, however, have re-created their Japanese success in the West. For example, GungHo Online Entertainment’s Puzzle & Dragons role-playing match-3 puzzle-RPG is the top-grossing game in Japan, but it isn’t in the top 20 in North America or Europe.
Last year, GungHo partnered with Clash of Clans developer Supercell to bring that game’s characters into Puzzle & Dragons to give it a boost in the West. While that might help, cracking the top of the charts on mobile is very difficult. Since 2012, in the United States, Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga have dominated the No. 1 and 2 spots on the grossing list since 2012.
Line Rangers, like every other mobile game, is looking for any edge it can find, and it’s hoping it found that in Angry Birds.