Wuthering Waves, Gakuen Idolmaster, Squad Busters: Which new mobile games won Ja

• GameRefinery’s latest analysis reveals which May releases had the strongest start in Japan
• Squad Busters and Wuthering Waves were the most downloaded mobile games in Japan this May

In “another bustling month for the mobile market”, May 2024 saw multiple new hits release like Supercell’s long-awaited Squad Busters and Kuro Games’ multiplatform monster collector Wuthering Waves.

As always, some games did better than others, and some did better in certain countries than others. In Japan, for example, Squad Busters was the month’s most downloaded mobile game, keeping Wuthering Waves from scaling its way to the top.

According to GameRefinery’s latest blog post, the pair also came out ahead of the pack in the US; Squad Busters claimed gold and Wuthering Waves silver.

The latter also launched on PC, PS4 and PS5, going to show how far mobile power has come. And with open-world titles like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and now Wuthering Waves launching on iOS and Android as well as the latest console hardware, it’s no wonder Apple’s developing a Game Mode for iOS 18.

Japanese favourites

Also in Japan, QualiArts and Bandai Namco’s Gakuen Idolmaster landed in the top 10 highest-grossing mobile games chart and spent multiple days on top. The game’s a spinoff of The Idolmaster, a franchise dating back almost two decades with a focus on pop idol careers.

From anime to radio shows to printed media, the series has taken many forms, the latest being a mobile game about training idols and building connections with them.

GameRefinery notes similarities between Gakuen Idolmaster and Uma Musume: Pretty Derby, both titles which see players training up girls for some manner of competition – concerts or horse races, respectively.

Pretty Derby ranked “around 15th” this May, slipping somewhat after it “dominated” 2021 and 2022 as Japan’s top-grossing game. It’s just surpassed 21 million downloads too, with $2 billion in revenue from Japan alone.

Meanwhile, new release Break My Case peaked at number 32 on the top-grossing chart last month, coming from Promise of Wizard creator Coly. Break My Case is a match-3 game whose success is in line with the increased earnings of the puzzle genre through Q1 – up 17% in Japan.

Rather than matching inanimate objects, Break My Case’s USP is matching handsome men, who vanish in a harmonising sound when synchronised in a line; the title has a large emphasis on music.

Finally, Netmarble’s action RPG Solo Leveling: Arise debuted in the top 10 in both Japan and the US. “It’s since started to fall through the US ranks but continues to perform well in Japan,” GameRefinery notes.

The title accumulated 12 million pre-registrations and five million day one players.

After consumer spending on RPGs fell 24% in Japan during Q1, it remains to be seen if Solo Leveling: Arise’s early Q2 success is an outlier or a return to form for the genre at large…