Dragon Quest Walk Takes Flight in Japan, Earning $86 Million in Its First Month

Dragon Quest Walk, Square Enix's take on location-based augmented reality games, has had the second-highest grossing launch month ever for an AR exploration game in Japan. According to Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data, the title has been downloaded more than 1.7 million times across both the App Store and Google Play, generating an estimated $86 million in player spending since September 8.

While Dragon Quest Walk's launch month gross revenue is only 73 percent of the $118 million earned by Pokémon GO, its Japanese players have already proven more dedicated than those of Niantic's juggernaut, with an average of $51 spent per download compared to Pokémon GO's $12 per player.

Dragon Quest Walk's launch month revenue far outpaces other big-name competitors in the AR field—for instance, it's earned an impressive 89 times the amount generated by the third-highest grossing location-based title in Japan, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite (also by Niantic), and Dragon Quest Walk's $86 million in Japan outstrips Wizards Unite's global first-month figure of $12 million.

Big in Japan

Well-known AR titles that are popular in other markets, such as The Walking Dead: Our World, Jurassic World Alive, and Ghostbusters World had Japan launches that grossed comparatively little revenue. This is likely because Dragon Quest Walk and Pokémon GO hail from series that have both proven popular in Japan; Dragon Quest Walk is a spin-off of a console RPG series established in 1986, and the latest mobile title in the Pokémon franchise, Pokémon Masters, just celebrated reaching $33 million in its launch month.

Of course, it may also be that long-running Japanese-created properties such as Dragon Quest and Pokémon simply resonate more with their home market than Western properties. Likewise, with no current plans to launch in other markets, we have yet to see if Dragon Quest Walk's success will extend beyond Japan.