'Most lucrative mobile game in the world' Puzzle & Dragons heading to 3DS in Japan
Large scaly success
GungHo's super-lucrative free-to-play colour-matching smartphone franchise Puzzle & Dragons is making its way over to 3DS in Japan.
This announcement was published in May's edition of Monthy Comic Korokoro, in which it's noted that the 3DS version, entitled Puzzle & Dragons Z, will be launched later this year.
The original iOS and Android game features a combination of turn-based combat and match-three elements, not unlike Puzzle Quest or Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes.
To succeed in this game, then, you have to unleash attacks on fantastical enemies by matching coloured orbs.
Hot propertyThough Western gamers may not be entirely familiar with Puzzle & Dragons - which has been available on the iOS and Android app stores in Japan since February 2012 - it is currently considered the most lucrative mobile game in the world.
At present, the Puzzle & Dragons Japanese userbase is growing by around 1 million every few weeks. Thanks to this kind of astonishing adoption rate, the game generated annual sales of $280m last year for its creator.
Far from dropping off in its second year, Puzzle & Dragons is demonstrating even-greater profit-making power in 2013. In fact, GungHo reported that the game grossed somewhere between $62 and $86m in February 2013 alone.
Puzzle & Dragons is available right now for free on the App Store and Google Play in the US, Japan, and Korea.
